2 Questions...

[WillyRBeek]

1) For the longest time I was unable to find the proper kind of ammonia to do a fishless cycle, so I just gave up on it and decided to go with a fish in cycle. Then over the weekend I stumbled upon what I believe to be the right kind of ammonia by accident at a hardware store. Now, I already have a blue gouramis in the tank, and my question is: Would I be able to temporarily move the Gouramis to my other tank, or would that overcrowd my other tank, and would the Gouramis be aggressive towards my other fish?

In my other tank I have:

2 small angelfish
2 red eye tetras
3 neon tetras
6 corydora catfish
1 bristlenose plec
1 sunset platy
1 africian dwarf frog
1 red rocket something or other

Both tanks are 25 gallons, and the Gouramis is roughly about 2 inchs long, and thus would be without question the largest fish in my other aquarium. Also if it means anything, judging by it's behaviour i'm guessing the Gouramis is a female.



2) When I was at my LFS today I was in a bit of a rush and I accidently picked up the wrong type of filter media. I meant to grab another bio max cartaridge, but instead grabbed one called "Zeo-Carb". The box says:

"Combines activated carbon and ammonia remover. Removes toxic ammonia and nitrite, odors, discoloration and impurites. Now i'm wondering, is this actually useful as bio-media, or should I just take it back and get the right kind?

 

[Corleone]

Don't know enough about blue gouramis. They're a Trichogaster species, which I have heard can get aggressive. IMO it'd be better to temporarily crowd the tank than risk them in a fish-in cycle.

The media you got is probably zeolite, which will absorb ammonia chemically instead of biologically oxidizing it. I'd stay away from it - since you're doing a fishless cycle, you definitely don't want something removing ammonia, or your bacteria won't be getting what they need to grow.

 

[WillyRBeek]

Don't know enough about blue gouramis. They're a Trichogaster species, which I have heard can get aggressive. IMO it'd be better to temporarily crowd the tank than risk them in a fish-in cycle.

The media you got is probably zeolite, which will absorb ammonia chemically instead of biologically oxidizing it. I'd stay away from it - since you're doing a fishless cycle, you definitely don't want something removing ammonia, or your bacteria won't be getting what they need to grow.

I probably should have specified in my original message: The filter media that I accidently purchased today is for my other tank, which is already fully cycled.

In my new tank that i'm in the process of cycling I just have your standard biomax, carbon and foam at the moment.

 

[waterdrop]

A lot of people are probably going to tell you that you will overload the already pretty full tank, but my personal take on it is that given the temporary situation you are talking about it really wouldn't be so bad. Of course you'd have to monitor the full tank and do water changes if necessary.

I think it could be a good thing to do so that you could fishless cycle the new tank now that you have found the right type of ammonia.

No, you don't want carbon and zeolite for your biomedia. Both of those are optimized for different types of chemical filtration. Zeolite will probably never be needed, but the carbon is useful in a few situations. Take it back and choose ceramic pebbles, rings or possibly sponge, depending on what you think you can adapt best to your filter.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[WillyRBeek]

A lot of people are probably going to tell you that you will overload the already pretty full tank, but my personal take on it is that given the temporary situation you are talking about it really wouldn't be so bad. Of course you'd have to monitor the full tank and do water changes if necessary.

I think it could be a good thing to do so that you could fishless cycle the new tank now that you have found the right type of ammonia.

No, you don't want carbon and zeolite for your biomedia. Both of those are optimized for different types of chemical filtration. Zeolite will probably never be needed, but the carbon is useful in a few situations. Take it back and choose ceramic pebbles, rings or possibly sponge, depending on what you think you can adapt best to your filter.

~~waterdrop~~

Would throwing another biomax filter into the mix do any good? Due to the fact that I had to buy a new pump for my other aquarium today because the old one burned out(Long story that was explained in the thread "Power Outage"), I have a spare biomax media filter kicking around right now.

 

[waterdrop]

I may have to pass on this one, not familiar enough with the brand names. I do know that Hagen Fluval make a "BioMax" ceramic ring media that is a good biomedia. (The purpose of ceraminc ring media is twofold, the ceramic surface has lots of very small pores for the bacteria to anchor in, but the overall shape and solidity of a hard ring serves as a "water current randomizer", helping to reduce the chance of a problem called "tunneling" wherein the water seeks the path of least resistance and manages to not get filtered as well as if it takes a random meandering path through the filter media.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[WillyRBeek]

I may have to pass on this one, not familiar enough with the brand names. I do know that Hagen Fluval make a "BioMax" ceramic ring media that is a good biomedia. (The purpose of ceraminc ring media is twofold, the ceramic surface has lots of very small pores for the bacteria to anchor in, but the overall shape and solidity of a hard ring serves as a "water current randomizer", helping to reduce the chance of a problem called "tunneling" wherein the water seeks the path of least resistance and manages to not get filtered as well as if it takes a random meandering path through the filter media.)

~~waterdrop~~

I'm not sure exactly what they're made of, but they're little white tablets. Here's a picture of the box:

 

[rabbut]

Great bio-media, made of ceramic as Waterdrop desctibed above Give the spare media a rince and add it to your filter. Why are you replacing mature media BTW? Is it bacause you seeded the other filter?

The stuff you bought that contains zeolite and carbon is great for running QT tanks that don't need treating if for some reason mature filter media wasn't available to seed the QT tank. If you keep a QT tank, I'd keep that box to run that if you ever need to. If you don't QT, take it back for an exchange/refund as it is no good to you

All the best
Rabbut

 

[WillyRBeek]

Great bio-media, made of ceramic as Waterdrop desctibed above Give the spare media a rince and add it to your filter. Why are you replacing mature media BTW? Is it bacause you seeded the other filter?

The stuff you bought that contains zeolite and carbon is great for running QT tanks that don't need treating if for some reason mature filter media wasn't available to seed the QT tank. If you keep a QT tank, I'd keep that box to run that if you ever need to. If you don't QT, take it back for an exchange/refund as it is no good to you

All the best
Rabbut

Not really replacing mature media. I was tipped off on this board about a month ago that the carbon filters the pet store tells you you need to buy are basically worthless in a mature tank, so I just removed it and thus have some extra room in my filter, so i've been meaning to add some more bio media to the filter since then, I just always seem to forget about it when I go to the LFS. So having 2 biomax bags in the same filter won't be a problem, correct?

 

[rabbut]

No problem, no, I'd add the spare stuff I'd also swap some media between the mature tank and the cycling one, arround 1/4 of the mature media from the established tank, to give you a good filter seed

HTH
Rabbut

 

[Miss Wiggle]

glad you said that rabbut, was wondering what was going on that no one said anythng.....

if you already have one cycled tank then you have no need to cycle the other one fishlessly or with fish....... just take some of the media from the cycled tank, put it into the new filter, stick a couple of fish in and just build up the fish load gradually......at worst you'll get a mini cycle for a couple of days.

 

[WillyRBeek]

glad you said that rabbut, was wondering what was going on that no one said anythng.....

if you already have one cycled tank then you have no need to cycle the other one fishlessly or with fish....... just take some of the media from the cycled tank, put it into the new filter, stick a couple of fish in and just build up the fish load gradually......at worst you'll get a mini cycle for a couple of days.

Won't taking the mature media out of the mature tank hurt the mature tank's ability to eliminate ammonia and nitrite/nitrates? Or does the good bacteria also build up in the tank itself, and not only on the filter?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

a mature bacteria colony can double in around 24hrs, so long as you don't remove more than half the media the existing tank shoudl eb fine, because you only have a few fish in the new tank just remove a quarter of the existing media and transfer it over, should then have two cycled tanks

only ever need to cycle either with fish or fishlessly once.

 

[rabbut]

After cycling my first tank, all my others have been set up in the way Miss Wiggle described, cloning the filter of a mature tank into the new one. Play it safe and remove no more than 1/3 of the total media. The good bacteria can double in size in 24 hours under ideal conditions, but our tanks don't always have ideal conditions for bacterial reporduction. Notably, the temperature is lower than the ideal

All the best
Rabbut

 

[WillyRBeek]

a mature bacteria colony can double in around 24hrs, so long as you don't remove more than half the media the existing tank shoudl eb fine, because you only have a few fish in the new tank just remove a quarter of the existing media and transfer it over, should then have two cycled tanks

only ever need to cycle either with fish or fishlessly once.

I'm a little confused as to how I can do this. I can't transfer 1/4 of the biomax media, as the tablets are in a little mesh net that I have no way of opening without being unable to close it again. Do you just mean like the media in general? Such as the sponge?

Here's what I have in the filter in both tanks:

Mature tank: 2 biomax bags(1 mature, the other I just added a few days ago)
1 foam filter

New tank: 1 biomax bag
1 carbon bag(I'll be removing this later, but I bought the tank 2nd hand and the gravel is still quite dirty so I need to filter that out)
1 foam filter

After cycling my first tank, all my others have been set up in the way Miss Wiggle described, cloning the filter of a mature tank into the new one. Play it safe and remove no more than 1/3 of the total media. The good bacteria can double in size in 24 hours under ideal conditions, but our tanks don't always have ideal conditions for bacterial reporduction. Notably, the temperature is lower than the ideal

All the best
Rabbut

I keep the temperature in my tanks a little bit higher then usual. They're both around 27-28C