Can Cold Water Media Be Used In New Tropical Tank?

[Zoepop]

Hi,
Just started my new tank today, planted up, filter on and ready to go...well to cycle anyway

Just wondered I already have a small tank running which is coldwater (well room temp anyway) would it be useful to wash out the filter media from that tank and add to the new or are you not meant to add cold bacteria from cold water to tropical? is it different?

also read on one site that i could pop the gravel from my current tank in the new tank to get some of the bacteria from it into the system, i will still be running my small tank..for a while anyway until i find my cold water fishies a new home...(part of the deal of getting my new tank!)but sure they wouldn't miss some of the gravel or decorations.


Hope that isn't a very obvious question!

Thanks
Zoe

 

[Fantail_John]

Hello

I'm no expert but i do have a cold water tank and when i got my 3ft tropical tank and i squeezed some water and a little bit of the filter sponge in to the new filter, and it's cycled it very good and seams to be a little faster than it did with my cold water tank with out old filter beneficial bacteria. Hope you will get a answer soon to confer this what i done. you can add some of the gravel but not a lot of beneficial bacteria lives in it, but will help a little.

John

 

[Ryefish]

it should help
The bacteria grows faster in warmer temperatures

 

[Zoepop]

Thanks

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with the others. The two groupings of bacterial species (Nitrosomonas spp. and Nitrospira spp.) are the same through the temperature ranges of moderate (pond/room temp) to tropical waters. Our recommendation of 84F/29C is simply because this is the ideal incubation temp to speed up cell division for these species. The same species would eventually build up even in fairly cold water but it would just be a lot slower.

The rule of thumb for transferring mature media from old filter to new filter is to only take one third of the biomedia from the old one (so that the 2/3 that are left will quickly re-populate the piece of new biomedia you replace with.) Meanwhile your new filter will have mostly new biomedia but ideally you'll position the piece of mature media so that it comes just before your new media in the water flow inside the filter.

The transferred mature media will have by far the largest effect. You also can and should rinse out the old media directly in the new tank so that still more debris and biofilm pieces will be sucked in to the new filter. The moving of gravel and decorations from the old to the new is quite trivial compared to these other two actions and I would only bother if the first two did not seem to have worked.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[PDSimon]

Agree with the others. The two groupings of bacterial species (Nitrosomonas spp. and Nitrospira spp.) are the same through the temperature ranges of moderate (pond/room temp) to tropical waters. Our recommendation of 84F/29C is simply because this is the ideal incubation temp to speed up cell division for these species. The same species would eventually build up even in fairly cold water but it would just be a lot slower.

The rule of thumb for transferring mature media from old filter to new filter is to only take one third of the biomedia from the old one (so that the 2/3 that are left will quickly re-populate the piece of new biomedia you replace with.) Meanwhile your new filter will have mostly new biomedia but ideally you'll position the piece of mature media so that it comes just before your new media in the water flow inside the filter.

The transferred mature media will have by far the largest effect. You also can and should rinse out the old media directly in the new tank so that still more debris and biofilm pieces will be sucked in to the new filter. The moving of gravel and decorations from the old to the new is quite trivial compared to these other two actions and I would only bother if the first two did not seem to have worked.

~~waterdrop~~

Good information WD, exactly what I was looking for, thank you

 

[waterdrop]

You're welcome Si. (just thinking up excuses to avoid my exercise walk back to the office after lunch, lol.) WD

 

[OldMan47]

You are describing one of my favorite ways to clone a filter Zoepop. I find that I can get a filter down to the last week of proving it ready in about a week or less with a clone like you described.