Quote Originally Posted by badflash
A "natural" cycle takes weeks to establish and stabilize. Inoculation from an established system is instant.
Oh, I was thinking about buying bacteria to get a jump start. The main problem about buying bacteria from who knows where is that if may not survive in your environment after a while. I have read where the bacteria does well for a while then dramatically gets out-competed by some other bacteria and there are sharp spikes in ammonium levels... whereas using another system nearby makes a lot of sense because it avoids this process and speeds things up dramatically.