Without fish. Without fish. Without fish. And did I mention without fish yet?
Fish-in Cycling ought to be illegal. Has no one talked to PETA about this yet? It's the aquarium version of a ten year old torturing a cat.
Rant complete.
Fish-in and raw shrimp method will be comparable. If you want to speed up the cycle, use Bio-Spira or some other brand of bacterial supplement. I've used Nutrafin Cycle before and my cycle took less than a week.
You are simply waiting for the bacteria to reproduce until they can handle the fish load, and feeding ammonia (tortured damsel fish poop or raw shrimp). Adding the bacterial culture gives this a head start.
Oh, and one more thing....
Fish are added AFTEr a cycle is complete. Never ever ever before. Ok, NOW I'm done. LOL