Question
I wanted to do a fishless cycling of my 33 gal aquarium, so I had filled it up, connected my airpumps, filters, and increased the water temp to 84 degrees. I also dechlorinated the water with Big Al's dechorinator formula. I have been dropping fish flakes in twice a day but I hadn't bought any water testing kit until yesterday. When I tested the water (after 10 days of dropping in fish food), the ammonia was 0 and the nitrite was 0, and the nitrate was 0, and the ph was 7.5+. This morning before work, I dropped in 2 frozen shrimp because I'm not sure if it's possible for my readings to be zero because my aquarium is cycled, or if it's because I haven't kick started the cycling process yet. How is the best way to determine this without adding ammonia drops to the water? What would you suggest I do?

Thank you for your help!!!

Answer
Adding fish food to an empty tank will not help much with the nitrogen cycle.  It will, however, make the tank very dirty and help bad bacteria and funguses to grow.  In order to do a fishless cycle, you should add ammonia to the tank.  You can buy ammonia (pure ammonia) sold with cleaning supplies.  Here's one page that goes into details on how to do fishless cycling.
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/fishless_cycling.php

I would use a gravel vacuum to suck out the rotting food. Then, either do the fishless cycling or cycle the tank with fish.  Good luck!

Robyn
fishpondinfo.com