first day readings + question about when to add plants

Once you're at the point at the end of the cycle where your tank reads 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and it can process the ammonia you're adding daily and bring it down to zero in 24 hours the cycle will be finished--this takes between 4 to 6 weeks.

At this point it's fine to add plants (after a big waterchange).

Actually plants can aid in the cycle, if you get fairly hardy ones then they should be totally fine at anywhere from about the week mark. Some people even add them right at the start.

Plants will make it more difficult to monitor the progress of the cycling process since they consume the nitrates as well. If you have a lot of plant mass and the plants are fast growers, you can bypass the fishless cycle (not recommended unless you know the plants are healthy and growing). If not, I'd hold off on adding plants until your tank is done with the cycle.

You are still adding NH3 to the tank daily so I would hold off on adding plants. NH3 + light = Greenwater. Not something you want for a planted tank. Once your Nitrites crash, buy your plants and plant very heavily from the start.

Well I have fishless cycled about 10 tanks so far. Planted every one during the initial set up. Works fine.

The thing is plants eat ammonia etc. so you will need to colonize fewer bacteria in a planted tank for any given fish load than if the tank had no live plants.

I have always used the drops/10 gal. method for cycling and there is an easy way to test a tank for see if it is ready to handle a full fish load. If you can dose 3-4 drops of ammonia/10 gals of water and test the water in 1- 2 hours and have 0 Ammoni and 0 nitrite, the tank is ready.

There is no real point in cycling a tank with ammonia + plants.

For one thing, the plants will consume the ammonia you're adding so that the filter does not build up a major bacteria colony (a well-planted tank never really "cycles" at all).

Secondly, (as rrkss mentioned) large amounts of ammonia in the water (required for cycling) + aquarium lights on for 10-12 hours (required by plants) = algae risk.

Either do a regular fishless cycle and add plants at the very end, or bypass cycling altogether and add a ton of plants at the very beginning. You can't effectively do both at the same time.

Aha. Ya'll may have just answered one of the frustrations I've been having with my new tank. I decided to go with a planted tank and started our 20gal up with plants the first day. Never having been solely responsible for cycling a tank (had tons of tanks as a kid, but the parental units and nearly always having other tanks to pull starter material dealt with the issue), I kept waiting for a clear-cut cycle that never happened.
We added zebra danio after three days, saw a small amonia spike, but it was a just a blip on the scale. Added more plants, started adding a couple inches of fish a week, and kept holding my breath.

Nice to know why our tank didn't follow the pattern all the books and sources said would happen.