Have googled for aquarium cycling and there seems
to be 301,000 different opinions on how to do it.
A straw poll, how many believe in the chemical
approach and how many in hardy fish and does
anyone have a method involving black cats and
ouija boards ?.

I will not sacrifice "starter fish" to cycle, nor do I do fishless cycling
in the traditional sense (adding ammonia, et cetera). I like the "multiple
aquarium" method. If you already have several established planted tanks and
wish to start a new one:

(a) Prepare new aquarium with treated water and about 3/4 of the gravel (or
other substrate of your choice) you will need.

(b) Add some gravel (or other substrate) from established tanks (replace
with new).

(c) Add plants from established tanks (replace with new plants if desired).

(d) Install your filters. Use cartridges or biowheels from filters in
established tanks (replace with new).

(e) Add the heater if necessary and give the tank a few hours or so to get
the temperature stable.

(f) Add just a few fish. These are NOT sacrificial "starter fish" but merely
serve as a small initial fish load.

Voila - instant cycled aquarium. Add fish a few at a time over a month or so
until you have the desired population. When I do this I seldom see any spike
at all in ammonia, nitrates, or nitrites, and never see a bacteria bloom
because a good bacteria population is already established in the old gravel,
plants, and cartridge or biowheel and will spread slowly and naturally
throughout the rest of the tank.

As you can imagine, the first tank is the hardest. If I had to start a tank
from scratch today, I would add treated water, substrate, plants, filter,
heater, et cetera, let it sit for a day or so, add a very few fish (again,
not sacrificial starter fish), and do 20% water changes daily for a couple
of weeks. I did a 30-gallon tank with five goldies that way late last year.
Even though that's a pretty heavy fish load, daily 20% water changes and
lots of plants kept the ammonia below 1 ppm (barely discernable on my test
kit). After two weeks the water was 0-0-0 and I went to my usual 20% per
week changes.

--
John Goulden
mostly guppies, goldies, swordtails, and bettas