Eradicating The Cycling Process

[9murphy9]

hi

i have had a theory, of how to cycle a fish tank in 10 days or less. Say you have a established 4 ft tank that's fully cycled and mature.
Then you buy a new tank,filter and accessories.so you place the new filter in your mature 4 ft aquarium next to your filter (it would have to be an internal filter) you then leave it for a week and allow the bacteria to transfer,you then put water out of you 4 ft tank into your new tank around 70 % ,you then add 30 % more of fresh water and you now have a new established tank that's just undergone a water change. would this work ? thanks fro any help

Alex

 

[KCB]

Most of the bacteria is in the filter, so putting the new one into the old tank will make it go through the same slow cycling process unless you add some mature media (but the process could still take a while). The bacteria won't just jump from their established home into a new one .

It might help it a bit though, so I suppose it's worth doing even if it is a vain hope it'll speed things up.

 

[JenCliBee]

hi

i have had a theory, of how to cycle a fish tank in 10 days or less. Say you have a established 4 ft tank that's fully cycled and mature.
Then you buy a new tank,filter and accessories.so you place the new filter in your mature 4 ft aquarium next to your filter (it would have to be an internal filter) you then leave it for a week and allow the bacteria to transfer,you then put water out of you 4 ft tank into your new tank around 70 % ,you then add 30 % more of fresh water and you now have a new established tank that's just undergone a water change. would this work ? thanks fro any help

Alex

No ..... there is very little bacteria within the water column, if any at all.... bacteria colonise on surface areas... adding a filter to colonise is a good idea though...however, it would probably take 3-4 weeks to colonise even a small colony...simply because your mature filter will already have the bacteria sufficient enough to sustain the waste from the current load.... so really unless you were adding extra load to need more bacteria to enable to deal with it... the filter would only colonise slightly.

Hope that made sense.

 

[DrRob]

It's a nice theory, but it won't work that way.

At best, the bacteria will spread evenly across the available filter media. The number of bacteria present in the system will be limited by their available food supply (ammonia etc) so you'll always have around the same maximum. They'll then spread across the available substrate, so, given time, you'll have two half cycled filters.

If you're breaking down the first tank in this process then the simple method is to move the filter media into the new filter.

 

[9murphy9]

oh that's my theory destroyed, thanks for the help guys,why does bacteria have to be so awkward thanks again

Alex

 

[9murphy9]

oh one last question,if a fish in cycle is quicker could you not just add a turtle as these aren't sensitive to water and then pop him in his own tank after a few weeks ?
thanks

Alex

 

[ColR1948]

What if you haven't got a Turtle lol?

 

[JenCliBee]

oh one last question,if a fish in cycle is quicker could you not just add a turtle as these aren't sensitive to water and then pop him in his own tank after a few weeks ?
thanks

Alex

Turtles are still sensitive to ammonia and nitrite.... they may just have a slightly better tolerance...however, turtles produces alot more in the way of load... so there subjective to more ammonia than a fish simply down to load produced.... so essentially, the load to inhabitant is the same so it will affect the inhabitant in the same way.

The second reason why it wouldn't work is due to the bacteria growth speed, bacteria will only colonise as quick as it would if there was 5ppm or 1ppm of ammonia, it's just the eventual load that could be added after which would increase.

All creatures are affected by ammonia, in the atmosphere, we would be affected just like a fish/turtle would be in water....

 

[9murphy9]

it was worth a try thanks guys

Alex

 

[zain611]

I would say if i get my next 215L tank is to get the sponge from my current filter in my 28L and squeeze the juice out of it and pour it into the other tanks filter or water so the filter picks it up as a 215L tank would take more time for a water change then a 28l which just needs one bucket of water so doing this would speed up the cycle

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Using media from an established filter is all that is needed. Bringing that material over is guaranteed to add bacteria to your new filter. The amount of bacteria added will be dependent on the amount of material moved and the bioload of the filter being used as the donor.


If you have a tank with a 20" of fish bioload, and take 1/4 of the media, in theory, the new tank would be cycled for 5" of fish. Doing a fish-in cycle would then go much faster than starting from scratch, and by much faster I mean MUCH faster. Where a fish-in cycle could last 2+ months, properly stocking the tank (slowly) it could be cycled for a small group of fish in a matter of DAYS rather than MONTHS.

 

[9murphy9]

hmm thats quite a good idea say if i got a fish room (my hopefully summer project) could i get say a 10 gallon and hang up a load of filter pads with some fishing string and a powerhead directing the current into the filter pads and dosed it with ammonia would it cycle all the filter pads at once and then i could effectively get rid of the cycling time ? thanks

Alex

 

[eaglesaquarium]

If you are going to have a "fishroom", why go to all that trouble with the 10 gallon tank? Just take your biggest tank and stock it up as you normally would and add more filter media than you normally would. I have little "floss bags" of ceramics in the back of my Penguin 200s to be able to seed a new filter whenever I want to.


Let's say in your fish room, you had a 100G tank, just load it up with extra media and fully stocked you'd have about 100" (or more, depending on how far you push your stocking) of "cycled" media able to move at a moment's notice. You could easy move 1/3 of that media to a new tank (meaning 33" of fish) to a new tank and not have to worry about a spike on the big tank - you'd want to keep checking it for a little just to be sure, but it should be fine. The bacteria should be able to double in number in about 24 hours, more than making up for the lost bacteria. Just be sure to replace the media as soon as you remove it, and things should be fine. Or, at least that's my understanding.

 

[9murphy9]

okay i'll stick an extra one in my 55 until my 180 has been made thanks

Alex