Fishless cycling question

[canuck]

I'm in the midst of setting up my new fishtank and I'm trying the fishless cycling process that was linked from one of the posts on this forum. The original article recommended adding 4-5 drops of ammonia per 10 gallons but the followup article recommends adding ammonia until it tests at about 5 ppm.

To get a 5 ppm reading on the test it took about 15ml (29 gallon tank). This translated out to over 300 drops! This seems like an exceptionally high number compared to the original 4-5 drops per 10 gallons. Does this sound like a reasonable amount? According to the article, I'm supposed to add this amount every day until I get a nitr?te (I can't recall which one off the top of my head ) spike but I thought I would check before I do that.

Thanks for any advice...

 

[yvez9]

you will get a nitrite spike

ammonia you buy can ahve different concentrations. You must have a very low concentration of ammonia.

It doesn't need to reach 5 ppm, 3 would be enough, or even 2.

The only difference is if you go with 2ppm, you will have to start stocking slowly as opposed to dump in pretty much all the fish together if you cycled at 5ppm...

 

[Def]

And if you're doing fishless cycling, be prepared to do a 90% water change at the end to remove the huge amount of nitrates...