Fishless Cycle

[friedegg45]

hi can i fishless cycle my kids 35ltr new tank by dropping in a piece of fiter media from my 2year old tank? i was just going to drop it in and let the filter and bacteria do the rest.i know this will be unsightly but it will only be there till it cycles(then taken out). if i have to put it in the new tanks filter that would mean cutting it up as they are different filters and i dont see the point in doing that.

 

[toshapetriji]

Drop the donated media into the new filter. Later you can remove it.

 

[erk628]

I dont see why you cant do it this way. What I would do is wash out the filter pad from your tank in your kids tank to get a lot of the bacteria to float. I would do this right next to the filter so it sucks most of it up. Then you can just leave the filter pad in your kids tank because some of the bacteria will still be there. This should speed the cycle up a lot might only take a week. Your gonna need a source of ammonia though to feed the bacteria or they will die. You could use pure ammonia which this will show you how to do that http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=113861 or you can use a fish food. If you choose the fish food I would suggest going to the grocery store and buying some shrimp and put it in a mess bag once it starts to decay it will start to release ammonia. I suggest putting it in a mesh bag to keep it from making a mess in your tank. Make sure not to do a water change until the cycle is done. You'll want to get a good test kit to keep track of the cycling process I suggest the API master test kit the liquid one dont get the strips there inacurate. The master test kit tests ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, and ph. If you have any other questions dont hesiate to ask!

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Fried Egg and welcome to TFF!

No! You'd be very disappointed if you just dropped the piece of sponge into the new tank hoping to cycle it! There's an enormous difference in effectiveness between MM (mature media) in the tank versus MM in the new filter.

You can reliably remove up to 1/3 of the biomedia (sponge or loose media) from the filter that's on the running tank and still have that tank run well. Of course, its good to go ahead and put some replacement new media in. Its not very hard to be creative on sponges with a pair of scissors.

Likewise its not that hard to turn off the new filter, use scissors on the old sponge if necessary and position the MM such that its in the water flow path just ahead of the new sponge that you want to be exposed to the bacteria. Little bits of debris containing bacteria will come off in the flow and be caught in the new sponge that comes right after.

You don't want your first stocking of fish to have gill damage from ammonia or nerve damage from nitrite, so growing the bacterial colonies with some pure household ammonia has become the method of choice. Its a very controllable way to both mature the colonies and to be able to measure and time their ability to remove ammonia and nitrite and know when the biofilter is cycled. We have a ref document and many other discussions of it here in the beginners section.

~~waterdrop~~