Can anyone advise me on fishless cycling. I just set up a new tank last week and have been adding roughly 25 drops of ammonia for 4 days now. When I test the ammonia levels it still isn't registering. Shouldn't there be some sort of sign by now?

fishless cycling works well if you drop the level of filtration down to a minimum and what you want to watch for is your nitrate and nitrite levels. and ph. depending on what types of fish you are putting in you after two weeks i would suggest placing some live plants in the tank, if you are going with salt water you need at least three to four weeks of cycle time before you add live rock and then another three weeks or so for the tank to completely stabilize before you add fish. if you are going with community fish i would suggest starting slow with two or three fish, and add slowly over the next few weeks, just keep an eye on ph, and nitrite nitrate levels and the ammonia levels.

hope this helps.
Brandon

i wouldn't worry too much about the live plant thing, if you aren't planning on doing any planting it's no big deal. as far as the ammo and nitrite levels when they reach zero i would do a 25% water change and monitor the tank should stabilize on it's own from there, you may get a bit of cloudy water for a few days, i wouldn't worry about that at all it's just an algae bloom, it's beneficial to the tank, from there once the water clarifies you should be set, check your levels and see where they are. you should be ok to start adding fish from then on, i generally like to add three to six fish at a time depending on the types of fish you are adding, if it's going to be a community tank there is nothing wrong with adding six smaller sized fish, if you are going to do cichlids or semi aggressive, i would stick to the three at a time rule. i have set up tanks where i have used water from my 125 gallon as seed water for the tank i also keep bio wheels floating in the big tank for a few weeks before i know i am going to setup a tank and use that also to seed the water for the new tank, this speeds up the initial cycling. there are no set rules for doing setting up a tank other than you want the tank to cycle completely before adding fish, due to the fact that if you add fish too soon you can end up with ph/ammo/nitrite/nitrate fluctuations that will go out of control. it appears that you have done everything right up to this point. now that the ammo levels are starting to register within a few days you should see the nitrite levels go up and then start to drop off on their own. no need to keep adding ammonia as if you add too much you can actually harm the natural biological system in the tank and end up having to buy more chemicals or starting over. i hope this extra information helps ya out. be patient as it can take time for the natural system to stabilize depending on the size of your tank.

Brandon

the categories of fish you have chosen are great choices, however if you are going to add mollies or sword tails, be careful because mollies and sword tails will breed like wild fire, worse than fancy guppies. adding one ram cichlid is not going to throw your tank out of whack you will want to put a large shell in the tank or make a cave of some sort for the ram to claim as territory, it will hang out mostly there, if you add more than one setup territories on separate sides of the tank so they don't have any conflicts. as far as angels and smaller tetra be wary that angels although slow movers are considered a medium aggressive fish, and if they have the opportunity they will eat any thing they can fit in their mouths, remember that angels can grow to larger sizes so small tetras would be seen as food. cory cats are great for bottom feeders as well as pleco for cleaning algae, remember most breeds of plecostemus grow to fifteen inches and they do it very fast, so if you are thinking, that will be too big and that it will wreck your decorations when moving about the tank consider smaller algea eaters. gouramis are perfect and are great to have in the tank they add wonderful color and display to the tank. you can add even more than just three cory cats. but it's deff up to you.
have fun choosing your fish!!!!

Brandon