A Newb Mistake - Advice Please!

[bachina]

So, even after taking care of one tank for a few months, I knew in my head i shouldn't have done it, but I did it anyway.

I washed a cycling tank's filter. It was cycling all fine and good--ammonia was down to zero, and nitrites holding steady at 0.5ppm, probably soon to start falling, but I noticed that the glossostigma was mostly dead and rotting, spreading brown stuff all over my tank and gunking up the filter. So, I thought it would be a great idea to increase water flow by rinsing out the filter. So, on my daily water change while the tank was cycling, I shook out the filter in the aquarium water I just siphoned out (I'm not that big of a newb to wash filter material in tap water )

And of course, since the rest of the tank hadn't really got a good biofilm on it yet, I wake up the next day and find myself with ammonia at 1ppm and nitrites still at 0.5ppm.

I quickly transferred the filter media from my first tank (it is a well established 4gal with an undergravel filter) and put it in the second tank.

The question is this: does filter media that was active and transferred from one tank to another really work instantly? or should I expect to nervously watch the ammonia and nitrite stay high for a few more days while I do water changes to keep the fish in there alive? Luckily, the lone betta in there doesn't seem to be stressed out at all--yet...

Thanks all!

--Hans

 

[rdd1952]

Transferred media will work immediately but may not have enough bacteria to fully handle the ammonia and nitrite until the bacteria multiply some. It usually takes about 24 hours for them to double so in a few days you should be fine but you probably will see a slight rise in ammonia and nitrite. Since you only have a single betta, it really should be enough to handle his waste though. Just don't feed to heavily. I only feed my bettas 3 Hikari Bio Gold bits once a day and he eats them immediately so there isn't any left to decay and produce ammonia.

Really, if you simply rinsed the filter out in the old tank water, you shouldn't have done too much damage to the bacteria you had.

 

[bachina]

Transferred media will work immediately but may not have enough bacteria to fully handle the ammonia and nitrite until the bacteria multiply some. It usually takes about 24 hours for them to double so in a few days you should be fine but you probably will see a slight rise in ammonia and nitrite. Since you only have a single betta, it really should be enough to handle his waste though. Just don't feed to heavily. I only feed my bettas 3 Hikari Bio Gold bits once a day and he eats them immediately so there isn't any left to decay and produce ammonia.

Really, if you simply rinsed the filter out in the old tank water, you shouldn't have done too much damage to the bacteria you had.

Eh, rinsed was a pretty mild word. What I actually meant was that i vigorously shook and rubbed all the junk out of it. Thanks for the info

Edit: Hm. I do remember adding some melafix just a preventative just because i thought i saw a weird white pimple-like thing on one of his swimming side fins. It looks like this white dot on this platy's fin in this topic: http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=167015 but he's not showing any signs of stress or erratic swimming. Hopefully its benign. Melafix doesn't disrupt bio-filtration right?

 

[Tolak]

It should catch up pretty quickly, usually in a day or two. When I clean sponge filters I squeeze the daylights out of them in a bucket of water, a good dozen or more healthy squeezes, with rinsing. I don't recall ever having a problem afterwards, though I'm using sponges that are 4" cubes for bio filtration. I've never treated media much differently, hob & canister media gets the same treatment without any problems.

I've never had a problem with melafix & bio filtration the few times I've used it, and I don't recall hearing of anyone who has. It's a very mild, natural medication.