Going to steal bacteria

[mnccnm]

I have an established Oscar tank. The filters are a Fluval FX4 and two weeks ago I added a Jebo 865. I am currently in the process of setting up a 80 gallon tank that will also be running an FX4. I hope to be adding water in a week.

My question is this. Can I put all the mediia from my Oscar tank FX4 in the new tanks FX4 to immediately establish the new tank. My concern is will the Jebo have been in use long enough, (3 weeks) to have bacteria established in it? I don't want to "short" the Oscar tank of bacteria.

 

[PheonixKingZ]

You won’t short it. You can move some of it over, but I definitely don’t recommend moving all of it over, or you may crash the cycle on your other tank.

 

[Naughts]

Some bacteria will have colonised the new filter but it will not be enough to immediately establish the new tank. The oscar tank will have enough bacteria to support the fish that are currently in there, no more. And this is spread across all the hard surfaces, not just the filters. So moving the filter is a good start, and the presence of bacteria will speed the cycle as they multiply rapidly once established, but if you heavily stock the new tank immediately then the fish will be exposed to ammonia and/or nitrite at some point. It will probably resolve in a few days but slowly stocking will be safer to give the bacteria more chance to catch up.

Do you intend to keep the old tank running simultaneously?

 

[mnccnm]

Yes, the other tank will keep running. Just trying to get a feel for how much bacteria I can steal from it without crashing it.

 

[PheonixKingZ]

I would get maybe half of the media from the other filter, and put it in the new filter.

 

[mnccnm]

Ok. Thanks for the tip.