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A fish Aquarium must cycle to become a healthy home for your fish. To better understand the entire process may I suggest reading all the below materials before getting started.

Why I choose Fishless Cycling over traditional methods (It's the reason this page was created, to help simplify and provide a layman's view on the process and how it works.)

When an aquarium is cycling large spikes of ammonia and nitrites occur. Ammonia and nitrites are toxic by products of tank waste. Simply put ammonia and nitrites can harm or even kill fish. With fishless cycling you can ready your aquarium, get it up and running; humanly, efficiently, quickly with minimal out of pocket expense. 

By using the fishless cycling method, the tank is cycled through the high ammonia and nitrite period before the fish are added. Once your tank has cycled. You can add your fish knowing you've done no harm to these wonderful creatures.

By choosing to fishless cycle your aquarium, you've saved yourself from the undesirable stress of watching your new fish suffer through the cycling process and possibly saved some money to boot. Replacing fish or buying costly chemicals to treat illness caused from the cycling process can be quite expensive especially in large aquariums.

Things you'll need for a quick cycle

1. The obvious: A complete aquarium setup, without the Fish. With substrate, filter (s), heater (s), light (s), lid the works. Set up and fill the tank and make sure everything is in working order.  I set my heater to 78, everything will run during the cycling period. I also provided additional oxygen via air stones or bubble wands. ( I run my lights for 8 hours each day.)

2. Pure Ammonia: (what I use is called clear ammonia. Ammonia used: Kroger brand clear, Ingredients: soft water, Ammonium hydroxide, surfactant, quality control agent (S) Contains no Phosphorus.) I buy clear ammonia at my local grocery store. It should have few ingredients, should state clear or pure ammonia on the bottle label and should NOT have a sudsing agent or Phosphates. When you shake the bottle it will not foam.

3. A Master water test kit: I use Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Freshwater Master test kit. What ever you buy, make sure you have the following tests: Ammonia, NitrIte, NitrAte and pH. (Note: The liquid tests kits are by far the best, don't waste your money on those test strips.)

4. Water conditioners if necessary.  Test your tap water to see if you need water conditioners. Water conditioners will neutralize chlorine and chloramines in your tap water.  Municipal water companies add chlorine or chloramine to the water supply to kill harmful bacteria.  This treatment can be hazardous or even fatal to aquarium fish.

5. Seed material: You will need some filter media and/or gravel from an established healthy aquarium.  Why? Because the media is packed full of the beneficial bacteria that's needed to kick start your cycling process. Large amounts of Seed Material will drastically speed up your fishless cycling..
( In my opinion this is the single most important ingredient to a successful, and quick cycling experience.) If you don't have any seed material available, try your local fish store and see if they'll share some filtration media or can direct you to someone who will.  ( note: caution must be used here, you don't want to introduce a bunch of chemicals or even disease into your new aquarium.)

Lets start that cycle going.

Now that you've set up your tank, every thing is running, You know everything is working properly it's time to begin the cycle process.

Either put the seed material in your tank filter (s), or stuff into a nylon hose and float in your tank. Let the tank run with the seed material for 4 to 8 hours. Now test for ammonia, in most cases, you should have an ammonia reading.  It may be small but there should be something, ( especially if you've used a large amount of established media). The more seed material you use the faster this will go. Now start adding ammonia to the tank.. see below...

There's two types of bacteria that create the cycle. The first type processes ammonia (fish waste) into nitrIte.

To start a colony of this type 1 bacteria you will need to add ammonia to your tank, to feed it. You'll need to add enough ammonia to bring your test kit reading to approximately 5.0. (if your test kit goes that high, some do not!)

It's impossible for me to give you the magic number of how much ammonia to add, because every bottle - brand name of ammonia has a different concentration within. I will make this suggestion. Use common sense, start small and if you need more ammonia to reach the 5.0 reading you can add more to the mix. Don't forget to keep a record of the amount of ammonia your putting in the tank. I'd start with like 35 drops per 10 gallons of water and see what your readings are in 12 to 24 hours. Note: the most common mistake is adding to much ammonia from the beginning.

Once you've reached the magic 5.0 ammonia number, Add up the recorded amounts of ammonia it took to achieve your goal, to get your total dosage of ammonia. In a perfect world, every day, once a day, you'd add that exact amount of ammonia to the tank. For the rest of your cycle, you need only test your ammonia once every 24 hours.

What works for me is a simpler version. I use the total amount of ammonia it took to achieved the 5.0 reading. I just skip adding ammonia on any day (s) it reads higher then 5.0. (don't forget to test the water daily!!!) Once the numbers drops below 5.0 I add another full dose of ammonia.
( In my experience if your ammonia jumps above 5.0, after the first or 2nd dose, you'll need to cut the ammonia at this time, to keep the numbers at or below 5.0 if you wish to add ammonia to the tank daily.)  

Now comes the hard part, the waiting. You need the ammonia to feed the first type of bacteria, which will convert the ammonia to NitrItes and start the 2nd stage-type2 of the bacteria growing, converting the NitrItes to NitRates. 

If you've reached the 5.0 number on day one. And you've used a large amount of seed materials. About day 3 start testing for both ammonia and nitrItes. Once you see nitrItes you've entered the 2nd and usually longest stage of the cycling process. Be patience, as nitrites must now grow so they can convert into nitrAtes. (See diary links below for a day by day example.)

Once you get the first reading of nitrItes from your test kit, cut the daily amount of ammonia your adding to the tank by half for the rest of the cycle. ( Again through out this cycling period if your ammonia goes to high "over 5.0", skip a day, if needed skip more then one day and dose the tank with ammonia only when you ammonia drops below 5.0.)

As your 2nd stage the type 2 bacteria grows, (you really have to be patience here) as your nitrItes rise, in time you'll start to see your ammonia levels drop. This is excellent, just what should happen, it's a positive indication that your cycle is working as planned and your reaching the end of the process.  Don't stop adding ammonia, don't change the amount of ammonia. Don't do any water changes!  Your ammonia will eventually bottom out and give you a zero reading... Almost there now!

You can now start testing for NitrAtes.  Don't get spooked if/when you see large nitrAte test numbers. High NitrAtes just verifies the NitrItes are converting as needed to the less harmful NitrAtes, and at the end of the cycle you'll do a 75% or larger water change to rid your tank of those high NitrAtes.  Testing for NitrAtes at this time is only for your benefit to show yourself, the process is moving along.

After your ammonia levels reach zero, (remember your still adding ammonia). Watch those nitrItes; test daily, they will eventually start to fall off. Its different with each tank, but once the nitrItes start dropping it usually happens quickly.  Don't panic if it doesn't.  Just keep testing your water and when your NitrItes reach 0 your tank is cycled. Do a 75% water change, test your water to include your nitrAtes, if nitrAtes are low your good to go... Now test for pH as many fish have specific pH requirements.

You've made it! It's fish buying time, you can happily go out and buy some healthy fish (don't overstock) to add to your cycled aquarium. ( if for any reason it will be a few days before you add fish.  Make sure to keep adding ammonia to the tank. Other wise the beneficial bacteria you've worked so hard to grow can die off.)

Some additional notes: Water changes can prolong-stall the fishless cycling process, don't do them, until you've reached the end of the cycle. There is one exception; If your ammonia levels are off the chart from the beginning, then I suggest doing a 50% or higher "if needed" water change, to bring that ammonia level down to 5.0. Test the tank every 12 to 24 hours. Once the ammonia levels are within the 5.0 range, you'll need to recalculate the new amount of ammonia used to find your daily dosage.

pH: test it... a low pH 6.5 and under can be a problem. As a low pH can cause problems for the developing beneficial bacteria.

Links

• 10 gallon cycle diary: This will provide you with a day by day look at my cycling results. Larger aquariums usually take longer, so have patience. A simply perfect cycle experience and  took only 10 days.
• 125 gallon cycle results, My first fishless cycling results, showing all the mistakes I made along the way.  It was a true learning experience. Even with all my beginners errors tank cycled in 20 days. Thanks to everyone, you know who you are, who helped me through it!
• 110 Gallon "Casey's Cycle Diary" Water issues needed to be resolved during this cycle.
• Cycling Adventure ( getting started )
• (Fishless cycling by Chris Cow: Alternative Recipe directions we used as our guide )

These are my fishless cycling results. I am not an expert, I can't guarantee any results for anyone else. I've posted a few of my experiences with fishless cycling in the hopes it will help others who may wish to try the fishless cycling method, to better understand the entire process. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions

I've Successfully cycled or helped to cycle 73 tanks using the instructions above. The entire process is simple and truly works. 

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