Hi there, I'm fairly new here and also to the whole hobby itself, so please bear with me

About a month ago I purchased my first ever tank from my LFS (an Aquaone 510 - 16.5 gallons), got it home, assembled the cabinet, put the tank on top, added the gravel and then filled it with water, making sure to de-chlorinate it. A few days later I went back to the shop and purchased a few plants and a decoration or two and added them to the tank as well. It was starting to look good now and was thinking that my next step would be to add the fish. The woman at the fish shop told me to wait about a week and advised me to purchase this bottle of instant bacteria, adding it to my water once a day for the whole week. She said it would be fine to add my fish after that.

It was around that time I stumbled across this fantastic forum and discovered the process of cycling an aquarium. To my surprise I found out that these bottles of 'instant bacteria' were completely useless and that the best way to cycle my tank was to do a fishless cycle by using household ammonia. As i obviously didn't want any fish to suffer in any way I opted to try out this fishless cycle. I went out and purchased a bottle of household ammonia from my local Homebase as well as an API water testing kit from my LFS.

I also discovered the nifty aquarium calculator on this site and worked out that seeing as my tank was 16.5 gallons I needed to add about 4ml of ammonia to raise it to 5ppm. I did this, sat back and started the waiting game, making sure to test the ammonia level in my tank every day to see if it had lowered. I've now been testing my water for exactly two weeks and have not seen a single drop in the ammonia level at all. Every day that I test it, the sample water turns green and reads 4ppm on the little card.

It was then that I was about to ask on this forum what I should do seeing as nothing had happened in two weeks. However, yesterday I got talking to a colleague at work and to my great surprise found out that her husband has been keeping tropical fish for years. He picks her up from work and when he comes in next time hes going to very kindly and generously donate me some mature filter media from one of his tanks to boost my cycle. I think he said it was some cotton wool or something similar. As you can imagine I was thrilled. I've been reading about using mature media and how it can instantly cycle your tank.

OK, so thats my story, but now I have some questions and would really appreciate some help.

1) How long does bacteria on a mature filter media survive for when its been taken out of the tank? As I need to drive home from work with it to add it to my tank. It's not going to die off, is it?

2) How do I go about adding this media to my tank. He said that I should squeeze the gunk out into my water. Is that right?

3) How fast will it cycle my tank? I've read that you should buy the fish the next day to stop the bacteria from dying off, or else feed them ammonia to keep them alive.

4) My tank at the moment isn't looking exactly clean either. I have brown algae everywhere and a few snails that seem to have popped up. My water isn't exactly crystal clear either. Should I go about doing a water change before I purchase any fish? If so should I do this before or after I receive this mature filter media.

OK, thats it for now I think. Sorry if some of the stuff I say doesn't make any sense. I'm still rather new to the hobby. If you don't understand something I'll be happy to try and explain it again.

1.How are you transporting it?

If it becomes too dry-theyl start dying off quite quickly.
If it lacks oxygen, again, it will begin to die off, keep it in a bucket of old tank water with some ammonia in it and drive very carefully lol, or some container that will hold it in and it will be fine like that


2.That should do the trick yes,

3.There is no definite way to tell, if conditions are perfect throughout it could shed a good week or two off, depends on how much bacteria you put in there.

4.While the tank is cycling, dont worry too much about cleaning, but once the cycle is complete (when ammonia goes from 3-4ppm to 0, and then nitrites follow from 10ppm (1:2.7 ratio of ammonia to nitrite) to 0 ppm in around 12 hours youre fully cycled.

Ive changed my water twice while doing a fishless cycle and i did it while gravel vaccing anyway, and its quite disturbing how murky the water got as i was agitating everything, even after rigorous vaccing TWICE, if i stir the gravel, the water becomes terribly cloudy.

When your cycle is complete its best to do a 90% water change, however, run the cycle again (pour some more ammonia in) and check for a couple more days if the cycle is still going, the worst thing to happen is do a 90% water change, and something goes wrong and the colony dies off, you stick the fish in, and your ammonia and nitrite start peaking off chart.

For the transport home, just put it in a baggie or something like that to keep it wet and do not prevent oxygen from getting to it. This means you leave a large air bubble in the bag before you seal it. Once home, you can indeed squeeze the thing out near where water goes into your filter and it will take in the stuff you have removed from the filter floss. If there is a good spot in your filter, it might be even better to put the floss in the filter and let the water go through it and transfer to your filter more directly. Do not charge out and buy fish until you can see the tank respond to the new seeding you have done. If the next morning you have no ammonia and no nitrites then you might be ready. If it comes down slowly over days, you need to keep feeding ammonia to the filter to let it improve its ability to convert. This should not take long when you start with a live bacterial colony like you will be.