Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

...when the system has cycled??

Your ammonia levels will spike, and begin to fall... as your nitrite levels spike... your nitrates should begin to rise...

Then both your ammonia and nitrite spikes should fall to zero... rapidly.... and your nitrates begin to rise further....

How long... depends on temperature... and pH (IMO)

ok.... I'm plotting it to keep an eye on it.. What is the general average time for this to happen?

...can I add.... you might not notice the Ammo spike (unless you monitor water parameters) until the nitrite spike and possibly you could miss all 3 if you don't test all the time.
Then you might see the water clear up and know this is a sign of cycling.
IMHO only

Three tests and more to come

Is daily testing a good thing or less often ?

I was testing at 3 times, morning, arvo & night.

The reason for this was to catch the changing levels with the changing temps.

If something smells strange, test the water, cause probably won't be right

Takes about a month on average, but there are multiple factors.

Longer: cold, low pH
Shorter: warm, 7.5-8 pH.

There are probably more factors I'm not thinking of.

Daily testing is probably good for keeping an eye on your cycling.
Between 3 and 6 weeks is probably average for cycling.
Are you cycling with fish or going fishless until after cycling is completed? If fishless what ammonia source are you using?
If with fish, how many what size, and how big is your system? What are the temps there this time of year?

Testing daily or every two days until you cycle should give you an idea of how it's doing. If you have fish in there, you probably want to test more at this early stage so you can react to keep fish alive. Once you are cycled, testing once a week is good unless a problem crops up.

We have 16 rainbow trout fingerlings at the moment in the 1000lt tank/500lt growbed.

At the moment our temps have been quite high around the 30oC most days...

Yep keep up regular testing and keep up the aeration for those trout!

Embi - One more piece of equipment is a large thermometer
...for a coupla bucks at red dot even a small one will do
Just easier to see a big one
yep if your going to plot yr water tests may as well do the temps too...
same times each day will give you a trend for the time of year

Yeah I have a bouy for a temp guage!