Oohitsae
Aquarium Advice Addict
Yeah, you can use fish food or a raw deshelled shrimp to produce to the ammonia rather than getting a bottle.
Just throw enough in there to try and produce 4ppm or near that and keep an eye on it. Add more if/when needed until you see nitrAtes and your ammonia drops to 0 within a few hours of adding more ammonia source. Then do a few large water changes to get your nitrates to a useable level and add as many fish as you want at once since the system is used to a lot of ammonia already.
It's not as exact as using bottled ammonia, but still better than doing fish-in cycling since it takes longer and you have to add fish slowly once cycled (if you add more) so the system won't go through more mini cycles.
Just throw enough in there to try and produce 4ppm or near that and keep an eye on it. Add more if/when needed until you see nitrAtes and your ammonia drops to 0 within a few hours of adding more ammonia source. Then do a few large water changes to get your nitrates to a useable level and add as many fish as you want at once since the system is used to a lot of ammonia already.
It's not as exact as using bottled ammonia, but still better than doing fish-in cycling since it takes longer and you have to add fish slowly once cycled (if you add more) so the system won't go through more mini cycles.