Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You can go ahead and keep the system cycling until you are ready to make the changes and yes, you could cycle up the gravel just between the sump and the grow bed just fine. No need to totally throw everything away.
until you are ready to get fish, you can continue using what ever you used to dose your system for cycling to keep your plants alive. With a new seedling you won't need much. Just make sure to not dose for a week or so and make sure both ammonia and nitrite are down to 0 before you put fish into the system.

It is really ok to let things go really slowly with the AP system. Patients is a good thing now.

Okay, so after the initial dose of 2.0 ppm of ammonia into the system, even after it reaches 0.0 ppm, I still need to wait until I begin to see nitrite readings before adding more ammonia? Because I just tested for nitrites and my API's vial is showing 0 ppm of nitrites, even though the ammonia was cut by 50% from 1 and 1/2 days ago. I was expecting some nitrite levels...



Indeed. And I got school coming so that makes the waiting easier.

Yeah, no real harm done by cycling up as it stands... any negative affects would be more cumulative over time.. particularly within fish flesh...

So go for it.. and when you've got the time swap the pipe out... maybe before you put the fish in... could take you 4-6 weeks to cycle anyway...

If the ammonia gets to 0 go ahead and dose again. It can take some time before you see nitrite, sometimes things get sucked up in an AP system before you catch it and since you have plants already starting, it will be possible that they could use up the nitrate as soon as it starts getting made so you might have to be really quick to catch that one but then again, it is also quite possible that you will have plenty more nitrate than you need.

Patients, keep testing and no stress since there are no fish in there.