A rookie question.

You can also dose ammonia. The only stuff I use is the janitorial strength stuff from Ace Hardware as it has no surfactants (soap). The stuff you can get at target and wal-mart sometimes works too because all soap is surfactant but not all surfactant is soap, if you shake the bottle vigorously and it doesn't foam up at the top, you're good. But all you need is a 1 qt bottle which you will never use all of, ever. so that's why I go to Ace.

IMO the fastest way to cycle your tank, or to be sure it's cycled. If you raise the ammonia to between 1 and 2 ppm and it's converted all the way to Nitrate the next day, your cycle is done.

 

It depends on the concentration of the one you buy. I started with the target/wal-mart brand and it wasn't as strong as the Ace brand. I think for a 250 gallon tank I was adding 1/4 cup a day to keep it around 2-4 ppm (don't exceed 4, but stay above 1) but I can't recall, it was 2 years ago. Maybe I put it on a thread....I'll have to look that up...

The best thing to do is to start with 5g of water in a bucket (RO/DI preferrably, tap will throw off the test kit) with a small powerhead, add 1 mL and let mix for a few minutes, then test, add another mL, mix, test, etc until you get an idea of how much will raise that my what amount, then extrapolate.

 

Ok I found it (that was fast) I was way off, Initially, I raised it to 2-4 ppm, and it took about a week to start dropping. With the Ace stuff I only needed to add 6 teaspoons (that's 2 Tablespoons) every day to 250 gallons and that was getting 100% turned to Nitrite by the next day, once ammonia started to drop. I think I was using 1/4 cup of the target stuff.

So that's 250/40 - 6.25 so 1 teaspoon for 40 gallons should raise it significantly, I would start with 1/8-1/4 tsp of Ace ammonia and test 15 minutes later, etc. Get it to 1 ppm then test in 24 hours. If no ammonia then test nitrite. If no nitrite you're done.