here's how testless cycling works
take a pinch of fish food and grind it up into powder in the palm of your hand
add it to the tank, make sure heat/circulation are on and running and on 10/26 = ten days from today not counting the extra few days it's been running the bacteria will be adhered to all the surfaces in the tank, do a big water change-50-80% and it's done. if you add animals to the tank then, they'll have their waste ammonia handled. ten days wait is a recurring theme across many microbial channels for a reason, that's how long it takes cycling bacteria to set up shop especially when you're dosing them from a bottle and then hyperfeeding them in the presence of heat and water.
it was never required to dose 2 ppm to any cycle to make it work, that was an arbitrary number made up by bottle bac salespersons. we've been cycling reefs without any testing for about 5 years now
you can see why I quit using non digital test kits in my cycles, there's always some reason they aren't working. intermixed among times they are working, nobody can be sure, so we simply came about it another way
notice that for forty years all cycling charts have a 10-12 day ammonia drop line, across all books and articles where they were referenced? handy timing that ten day thing is...
they're starting to do lots of posts in the research forum on how long it takes bacteria to set up shop, look for a ten day theme there as well. the one thing we did different here than what they do there is adding fish food/carbon source along with the ammonia you've added. that'll line things up by 10/26 even if you over or under-did a little feed, or if your bacteria are not super active, it'll align variables to have that bottle bac, feed and ammonia added.
now all you need is the calculated wait time. be reading up on the disease forum methods to stock your tank that don't instantly infect it...skipping disease preps is the true risk to your tank, bottle bac makers already got the cycle figured out just fine.
