Air During Cycling?

[JoshH]

Hi guys, my ammonia turned up! It's the right stuff !! got tank up to around 5ppm now, just wondering if its any benefit for aeration in the tank while its cycling? I have a 2x200lph air pump spare right now.

Also with regards to filter squeeze, I have a newly cycled 60ltr tank, can i literally just squeeze the media out into the tank? cant leave it in there as i only have the one set of media for that tank atm.

One more q I have a fluval 205 external canister, I read the carbon is pretty much no use right now and its in the lower two trays! I have the cyramic hoops on the upper two, any recomendation for the lower two instead of carbon?

Cheers!

 

[waterdrop]

Since your other little filter is newly cycled, you're correct that it would probably be better not to take mature media from it yet, although if you decided you could spare a small piece (square inch?) of sponge by cutting it and replacing it with a similar chunk from a new one you got, that would be much better than a squeezing. If you only do a squeezing then it could be enhanced a bit by doing it into the cannister filter after you've redone its media and are about to close it up for startup, even so its a long shot whether it would help much.

A typical media sequence is to have the water pass first through the ceramic rings (which are major biomedia surfaces but which also "randomize" the water into little streams going in different directions and slow it down. Next, a designer will often have it hit a coarse sponge to trap any large particles that have not settled in the ceramic rings. The coarse sponge is yet another good surface for bactera. Then you reach the point where you could try some sort of "ceramic pebble" (looks like gravel sometimes) layer to replace the carbon. Ceramic pebbles will have lots of surface area for bacteria, will have a more tightly packed nature for trapping smaller particles and will last about forever, especially compared to carbon, which will crumble and break down. Often a fine pore sponge comes next after the ceramic pebbles and/or polyfloss for "polishing" out the finest particles. Polyfloss needs replacing more often.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

My own experience with using a media squeezing was done with a very dirty canister filter. I had just set up a new 10 gallon with HOB and wanted to get it moving. I washed out my canister sponge in the 10 gallon instead of its own used tank water. 3 days later the new filter was testing as fully cycled. The very dirty sponge came out of the filter for my 120 so it had a lot of bacteria buildup. It was also 4 years old although it had been cleaned a few times in that amount of time. It is in a lightly populated tank so it only really needs cleaning every couple of months.
One big difference between your situation and mine is that my old filter was beyond mature. It had completely stabilized. I do water changes with water that tests at 1 ppm of ammonia right from the tap but I can never find any in the tank an hour later.

 

[Schmill]

Just thought I'd throw in my 2 penneth worth here.

I've been cycling my new 300L tank for the last month or so, (in fact nearly 2 now !), link in signature.
But anyhoo, I thought that this time I'd give the whole 'donor media' thing a go and see what happened, so I took one of the 2 sponges out of my Interpet PF2 internal filter in my 60L tank and put it into the 300's cannister.
Now I've had a couple of setbacks with my cycling, what with a few dodgy readings, and having to change tanks, but overall I can't honestly say that my 'donor' media made any difference at all to my cycle
Perhaps there wasn't much bacteria on the sponge I took out, (but it had been in there a fair while), perhaps the step between an internal on a 60L tank, and the external cannister on the 300L was too much of a big step for the small amount of bacteria to be noticed, or perhaps my bacteria were just a little agoraphobic and didn't like the move... who knows? - lol

Just thought I'd post as using 'mature donor media' is always recommended to help a cycle move along, (and it can't hurt to try), but don't expect a miracle, just be glad if it happens

Of course it's entire possible that it DID help my cycle along and the cycle would have taken 3-4 months without it, but I don't even want to think about that!