Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Foods like pellets and flakes, and frozen brine shrimp or worms, etc. How long do they take to decompose in the water?

At the risk of sounding pedantic, why aren't your fish eating the food?
Is it still cold where you are and they're just not eating much?

Ahh, no no, it's just that my seedlings are started and I just wanted to know how long it would take for the fish food to break down to fertilize the seedlings if needed.

They wont break down and fertilize the seedlings.

They will rot and kill any fish you have. Rotting feed is very nasty stuff.

No fish yet, fishless cycling

I'm not sure, it would depend on temperature.

Why with food though????

I think he's been having trouble finding materials for fishless cycling and trace nutrient supplements.

Food would be the last thing I would try to cycle with...

My advise is gonna be......
patients, you have found some way to dose the ammonia and cycling is under way.
You seedlings will be ok for a while.
Avoid the rotting food as it would stink up the place.

a dead prawn works - but take care

Urea....

No no I got the cycling started, just not sure which type of fertilizer to get. Nitrite actually turned purple; 0.25. Tested just 20 mins ago.

If you have an ammonia source to cycle with, you need no other fertilizer for the time being. Once you put fish in the system, then let the fish eat the fish food.

You can cycle with fish feed but you are encouraging yet another group of bacteria- heteortrophic bacteria. They are aerobic, the same as the other bacteria groups in AP systems. You have to be careful that you do the feed lightly and don't create dead zones or the anerobic bacteria will take over as their wastes are methane and sulferic acid- think along the lines of a biodigester or sewer line. If you encourage hetertrophic bacteria, their wastes are CO2 and ammonia. From that, the other commonly known bacteria will begin to grow. Oxygen levels will have to be maintained at high levels though as all of these groups of bacteria combined eat a lot of air- believe it or not, they caused the depletion of oxygen, thus ending the sustainable experiment, in Biosphere II.