new tank Ammonia cycling with plants and snails

[TheDojoMojo]

Hello. I'm about to jump-start my 125 gallon tank's cycle by dosing ammonia. The tank is heavily planted and has loads of snails (MTS) which I need to keep alive. I have a few questions regarding the cycling process:

1. How many ppm of ammonia should I keep the levels at? I am unfamiliar with how sensitive plants and MTS (or any snails for that matter) are to ammonia levels, but it would be a must that I keep the levels low enough that these organisms continue to live well. I can do more frequent dosing to keep lower constant if that is required.
2. The tank is very heavily planted, so will the plants consume the ammonia before the bacteria can? This may be a dumb question but I just want to make sure the dose won't just go to the plants.

Thanks for the help!

[Brandy]

Interesting. I have never tried to dose with ammonia when I planted heavily. I put snails in and waited for the algae to start growing and snails to produce their own ammonia. Then I just added fish slowly and monitored ammonia and nitrite closely and used prime and water changes to keep things under control until the bacteria caught up. I am interested in how this works and what other people will say. Sorry I am not helpful, but I am interested! 🙂

[MickS77]

I've never tried dosing ammonia. I would just have patience, feed the snails, and the cycle will develop naturally without any extra effort. Nothing good happens fast in aquariums. 

Cory has an old video about cycling with plants 👍