The only confusion I have is working out how much fish food to stick in a tank without fish.
Since I have coast to coast wier I know exactly how long it takes for uneaten food swept over the wier to decompose.
I mentioned three days in an earlier post however I wish mention to extend that to five days.
Not saying your method is wrong , each to their own.
To be honest, that is also my only gripe, as it is an estimation. Still though, I don't think it is too much of an issue to make a good guess as to how much food would be eaten. And I guess I didn't mention this, but it's always recommended to grind up the food as finely as possible and distribute it all over the tank. Even if the food does go over the weir into the sump or whatever, it is not as if it is not simulating nutrients going towards the bacteria anyways. It's also an issue with Tim's method, as the ammonia suggestion is also an approximation. It is hard to say that is exactly how much ammonia that would be produced per day from feeding and stuff.
But anyways yes, now that everything is cleared up, it simply seems to be down to different goals, and definitions of what a cycle entails. I think I'll stick to switching over to say 'microbial propagation phase' from now on, because it does seem like saying 'initial cycle' or really anything of the sorts would cause too much confusion.
