Help For Getting Through Fish-In Cycling?

[Amberleaf]

Things happened. First of all, I set up my 5.5-gallon Betta tank today w/ a divider & filter -- now, I didn't want to use an un-matured filter, so I stuck in my Mom's sponge. Actually, she did it. But.... We had to go out and buy a new sponge. Because we bought another Betta for my tank today, so we needed the matured filter. We put the new sponge in my Mom's tank, but it's only 6 gallons, and already somewhat (well, hugely, actually *hangs head*) over-stocked.

The 6-gallon tank has 4 platies, 2 female Bettas, 1 pearl danio, and a few guppy fry somewhere -- I think, like, 3; or somethin's. Well, anyways; currently, we have a completely-uncycled filter in a hugely over-stocked tank, and a cycled filter in a tank with two Bettas.

What should I do? Should I simply do a 10 % (I can probably manage more) water change every day on the cycling tank, for about a month, or so, and take ammonia readings sometime every day or two whenever I have time? From what I know, part of the bacteria will be in the gravel & inside of the box filter, on the walls, so should it be okays? We switched both the carbon *and* the sponge, btws....

OR, should I cut off half of the uncycled sponge, and half of the cycled sponge, and switch them? Kinda like this (u is uncycled part of sponge, c is cycled part of sponge):

uuuu - cccc
uuuu - cccc
uuuu - cccc
cccc - uuuu
cccc - uuuu
cccc - uuuu

Does that make any sense? Furthermore, would that even *work*? It would mean that both filters would be half-cycled.... or whatever. But surely that's better than one filter being all nice and cycled, while the other one isn't cycled at all.... Rights?

 

[OldMan47]

It makes good sense Amberleaf. Before cutting up the sponge I would start looking at proportions of fish. It sounds as if the betta tank has almost no fish in it while the other one is heavily populated. If you can more or less match the proportions, both tanks should recover very quickly from the media being shared.

 

[Amberleaf]

Yes. Both tanks are (roughly) the same size, with the Betta tank being half a gallon less.... Which doesn't matter. So, maybe I should have, like, 30 % of the matured stuff in the Betta tank, and around 70 % of the sponge that's matured in the 6-gallon tank....?

Like; like this:

uuuu - cccc
uuuu - cccc
cccc - uuuu
cccc - uuuu
cccc - uuuu
cccc - uuuu

Or.... Or something similar?

 

[OldMan47]

If that is the way the bioload proportions out then yes indeed. The amount of water in each tank really does not matter to the bacteria and its action.

 

[Amberleaf]

Okays.... My Mom *should* be able to help me, tomorrows.... Grahh; we tried to put black gravel in my 10-gallon today, over-top of my rainbow-coloured one; and nows, we have about 3 inches of gravel in some places. I'm going to get my Mom to help me take out all the stuff out of the tank, so that I can mix up the gravel, just a little bit.... ^^;

Speaking of which, tomorrow I *still* have to go out to pre-order that Wii game I wanted; ands.... ugh. T_T; Well, *anyways*; do you think that maybe I should baby-sit some of her fish, while the tank still cycles....? I'm sure that my tank can handle being over-stocked for a little while. ^^;

 

[OldMan47]

Her tank will start with most of the filter sponge so it should be fine and not have much of a cycle at all. Both tanks should mature well enough in the next week or so and just need to be watched while they get there. You might need to do one or two water changes but I would be surprised if it takes more than that.