Me versus my friend: cycling

[hhoang]

So I'm almost done with cycling my tank, my friend is near to the start of cycling his tank.
I chose to start with dry rock and seed with LR, ghost feeding.
He wants to speed up cycling by using dry rock, some LR and adding a bottle bacteria to supplement and dosing with pure ammonia, he got nutrafin cycle bacteria.
Do you guys think this will work? I have doubts that if it does it won't shorten that process dramatically.
Read recent reviews on the product and apparently they reformulated the product and the biggest mistake people make is not shaking the bottle good enough.
I honestly think his tank might crash though.

Opinions of all sorts are welcome.

[droog]

I think either way works, so in a sense you're both right. Bacteria in a bottle may shorten the time a little. Doubt that will lead to a crash, but in the grand scheme of things probably not worth rushing. In this hobby slow and steady wins the race.

You'll probably want to do other things different too. Celebrate the differences (or argue about them) whichever approach suits best...

[4Hummer]

Feeding pure ammonia is much more accurate, and in my opinion the faster way to go.

WHY?

Your bringing the Ammonia levels up the exact range you need (4PPM)
Ghost feeding you really have no idea how much food is required to get the ammonia levels up.

Pure Ammonia is a much more calculated a mathematical process. Every day you test the Ammonia, If below 4PPM you dose it back up to 4PPM and test again in 24hrs. you repeat this process until Ammonia and Nitrite go to 0 in a 24 hr period

Ghost feeding you really have no idea how much ammonia was added from the food, or how long it took to break down into ammonia.

As for the Bactria in a bottle, the debate is out on that.

[thegrun]

I'm a convert to the pure ammonia process myself. Hitting a predetermined ammonia level isn't all that important to me since in the end I'm still going to introduce livestock slowly, but you pick up 4 or 5 days in the overall process not waiting for a dead raw shrimp of flake fish food to decompose and produce ammonia.

[hhoang]

My thing is the whole bottled bacteria thing. I don't know if he'll pick up extra days, or once he stops dosing it, if it will cause his tank to crash or something crazy. I'll let you guys know how it goes for him lol

[cakemanPA]

It will not cause his tank to crash

[swcc]

bottle is fine

[mkoop]

Hitting a predetermined ammonia level isn't all that important to me since in the end I'm still going to introduce livestock slowly, but you pick up 4 or 5 days in the overall process not waiting for a dead raw shrimp of flake fish food to decompose and produce ammonia.

bingo...

It's the way to go imo as well