Ok well first of all, I did use decorations from an established tank, which is why my tank ended up so out of balance to begin with. I didnt know any better, and the lady who sold it all to me said it would help my tank cycle correctly.Now I have found out thats not true, and have boiled everything and set it out to dry.
This will help your tank cycle faster. The reason this is true is that when you have decorations from an established tank there will be beneficial bacteria living on it. It works really well if you get filter media from an established tank, because that is where the majority of the BB live. However, if you get stuff from an est tank and let it dry out before putting it in your tank, the bacteria will die anyways. so unless you kept that stuff wet in tank water it didn't do anything. Lol.
As far as re-cycling, it IS possible because my water has been replaced so many times and is pretty much new. When the ich outbreak first happened, I did a 90% water change and took everything out to boil it. I then did a 25% water change every day with treatment. The water I originally put in the tank is no longer in the tank.
That is what caused the re-cycle. Water changes could have helped from changing so much, but changing the water alone is not going to cause that. As I said a few times already, most of your bacteria live in the substrate, decor, and filter media. By taking it all out at once you killed most of it off. Granted, you had to do it because of the ich. I would have done the same thing. You need to keep up on your water changes, 50% daily to keep your levels down or your fish will suffer more.
As far as cycling goes, no one ever explained exactly what it was to begin with. I googled search after search and never really found a description, just that it needed to. Of course, anyone who doesnt know about it is going to assume that just means letting the water cycle through the filter and allowing the chemicals to do their thing. Thats why I only waited 24 hours to put the fish in.
Hope it makes sense where I'm coming from.
It does make sense, lol. Everyone does that I think. I thought the same thing, but a tank, put water in it, and put some fish in. When I googled how to set my tank up I found some article on Fishless cycling. Lucky that I did or I would have had fish in there the next day. Those links I gave you are very useful in describing the cycle. If you google Nitrogen Cycle or How to cycle a fish tank you should get tons of info.
At this point, I do understand somewhat that my tank needs to cycle for a few weeks without fish, but I honestly dont understand how the parameters of water can change without any fish in it. Isnt it just the same water cycling through the filter over and over?
Again, the water isn't where most of the bacteria is.
When fishless cycling, you add an ammonia source to start the nitrogen cycle. I prefer pure ammonia. Works great. When cycling with fish they are the ammonia source. Fish waste produces ammonia.
Once ammonia is present, nitrifying bacteria will grow to convert it to nitrItes. Then more bacteria grows to produce those to nitrAtes.