new tank..cycling my aquarium

any kind of cycling, whether fish or fishless, takes anywhere from 4-6 weeks depending on your specific tank conditions.

would it help to get a bacterial supplement? not unless it's "Biospira". none of the others work.

don't use goldfish .. they're not very hardy to ammonia.

There's no rush to put fish in the tank: I like to tell people who kept asking why I still had an empty tank running, that I was completing building the "plumbing" and "ventilation" of their new home. We just moved into our new built house - which of course, if it the toilet and sewage wasn't finished and working and the ventilation didn't work, wouldn't pass inspection and certainly wouldn't have been acceptable or healthy. Why throw fish into a new home for them, when it's not ready yet? (Not saying you can't Fishy cycle, I'm just saying this is about the only way I can explain to other people who have little experience why I didn't just toss a fish in. WHY are other people so pushy about putting fish in the tank anyway?)

My 12g took about 36 days to cycle, with no media. Sometimes very nice people on this forum will offer to mail you some of their castoffs, but you can manage without it.

Edit: About two weeks into it, I tried Bio-Spira, and unfortunately for me, it didn't do much. A lot of other people have had better success, but it's not 100% sure thing. (But thankfully I didn't have any fish in there!)

it should take at least 3 weeks to fully cycle. other than Bio-spira, other supplements dont seem to work. i guess i got lucky with a bottle of Stress Zyme, because i am the only one that i know of that it "worked" for me. my understanding is that the bacteria were still alive, but they were not the right types, so they died off (after eating ammoina for about a week and a half), but as they died off, new bacteria grew in their place, helping the cycle along.