Cycling a filter ready to transfer to new tank?

[Tttay89]

Hi.

A friend of mine has a tank he's been running for around 8 months. His parents have decided to get a tank and has asked me to ask on here if it is possible to run a new filter in his tank along side his filter now for a while and then transfer it to his parents to maybe give it a good boost when it comes to cycling it or speed up cycling time? They live a few roads up from him so water should be around the same.

Any advantage to this or waste of time?

 

[Essjay]

The new filter would need to be in the mature tank for at least a month. But there is a quicker way - swap some of the old media with new media, then put the old media into the parents' filter. Then they could either buy a few fish straight away, and build up the stocking slowly, or use the mature media to speed up a fishless cycle.