bulkrate;1002249 wrote: i wouldn't bother with running the skimmer during your initial cycling... Or at least for a few hours after dosing in the stability - you don't want to skim out the very bacteria you're trying to seed.
Don't forget to provide an ammonia source as well. I see lots of people having good results with dosing pure ammonia to raise the concentration up to .5 to 1ppm when using an inoculant (microbacter 7/stability/drtimms etc) for a week or two to keep the newly seeded bacteria fed & multiplying. Bonus is that this also avoids a smelly tank (like from the ol' chunk of shrimp in a pantyhose method) and ensures that the cycle gets established to the point of actually being able to keep up with the jump in bioload from an initial stock-up run of fish and/or inverts.
Regardless of which way you go, when your tank can process 1-2ppm of ammonia completely into nitrates within 18-24 hours it's cycled and ready to go!
