Hi montydog and welcome to the beginners section!
Agree with eagle, good explanation of the difference between "seeding" and "feeding!"
He has also pointed you to our baseline Fishless Cycling article and recommended the Add and Wait method (that's really about all we ever see anybody do, that method) and that is a good place to start. You'll need a good liquid-reagent based test kit and perhaps a couple of syringes (one for the ammonia, one for the tank water) and of course the right sort simple household ammonia. Bring the tank temp up to 84F/29C for the duration of the fishless cycle.
It is not a big deal one way or the other whether you have plants and decorations in during a fishless cycle. It can be a little simpler and more ideal to fishless cycle only with water and substrate, but many cyclers have family to worry about and who want to "see something" in the tank.
The reason lighting can become an issue sometimes is that light plus ammonia is what triggers algae spores to bloom. Since plenty of ammonia is present, if too much light is added, excess algae may result and be a bother. Whether it actually does or not however varies greatly for the different situations people have. If one has a very heavily planted tank (for instance, 70% of the substrate or more planted) then plant absorption of ammonia can become an issue but not many beginners have that problem.
You often don't really get any good feedback that the cycle is off and running until a week or two down the road. You have added an appropriate amount of ammonia and often it has just sat there (or maybe it dropped a little the first few days but then just seemed to stop) when you take your ammonia reading each day at your set time of day. Finally, the ammonia starts to drop to lower readings or goes all the way down to zero, that is usually the first sign that the cycle is actually working. In a smaller percentage of cases you might happen to see the nitrite(NO2) level rising a little (from the zero ppm it usually sits at in the beginning) and that might be the first sign that the fishless cycle in your tank is indeed working.
Extreme patience is the name of the game. It is quite normal for no one to be able to predict how long your fishless cycle will actually take or when you will see the various milestones that show progress. Sometimes the whole thing seems to happen in a very fast 3 weeks or so. Other times it can take more than 100 days for a slow one that suffers through some problems. Overall though, it is a very reliable thing that fishless cycle will occur and that you will build up a working biofilter (and better still a working knowledge about biofilters!)
I like to think of fishless cycling in 3 stages: before, during and after the "nitrite spike."
During Phase one you are hoping that ammonia will begin to drop and then begin dropping to zero within 24 hours after dosing each day. You are also hoping you will begin to see some nitrite(NO2) appearing.
During Phase two the nitrite(NO2) will have "spiked" up to the highest NO2 reading available from your nitrite test kit (this is because the actual parts per million is really higher than what your kit can read.) The second phase will not end until nitrite drops one day down to zero ppm within 24 hours after you dose ammonia.
During Phase three your nitrite(NO2) is reliably dropping to zero within 24 hours of dosing but it is not dropping to zero ppm within 12 hours of when you dose (you dose at the same hour of the 24-hour day so that readings will be regular and reliable and you always keep a detailed daily log of every action and observation.) Then finally, both ammonia and nitrite(NO2) will reach the point where you dose 5ppm ammonia and yet both have dropped to zero ppm within 12 hours. At this point you can begin your qualifying week.
During your Qualifying Week you simply watch your now working Biofilter drop 5ppm of ammonia to zero ammonia and zero nitrite within 12 hours each day. This ensures that both bacterial colonies are large and robust and ready to "drop down" to match even a full bioload of fish. At a convenient point after qualifying, you do a full water change, lower your temperature, don't re-dose anything and introduce your first batch of fish, which can be a full stocking or any subset (usually of course it is significantly less than a full stocking because you will have chosen some fish in your plan that are better introduced still later on.)
There are plenty of great members here to offer support along the way!
~~waterdrop~~
