Help Upgrading My Tank

RobberyinCSharp · Dec 27, 2011

Some of you may remember my earlier post about receiving a 20 gallon tank as a Christmas present. Well, I would like to make good use of that. I already have a filter for my new tank: the Hagen AquaClear 30. My 10 gallon tank is already cycled with a Top Fin 10 power filter and a simple tetra biobag fabric cartridge. The bio media for the AquaClear doesn't fit directly in my TopFin filter, so I can't grow the bacteria from one media to another. I was contemplating the idea of cutting up the fabric on the old filter and placing it inside of the new one, then running my 10 gallon tank with the new filter to encourage the bacteria to grow from one media to the other. However, I'm VERY scared of doing this. I don't want to do disrupt anything in my 10-gallon tank and I certainly don't want to lose the bacteria I've cultured over the last year. So I have to be *EXTREMELY* careful about the way I go about cycling this tank. Does anyone out there have some tips? I really want to do this right - no casualties!

micko · Dec 27, 2011

What's the media in the new filter?

You can cut the bag but only cut it up a wee bit. You'll then be able to replace all the media back into the bag again once its done.

thereverendturtle · Dec 27, 2011

I would just put the bio media in your ten gallon for a couple of weeks. Bacteria will cover it very quickly and help get the cycle going in your new aquarium very fast.

Rummynose · Dec 27, 2011

I rinsed the filters of my established 10 gallon tank in front of the intake of the running new filter on my 30 gallon tank. It worked like a charm!!!

RobberyinCSharp · Dec 27, 2011

micko said:
What's the media in the new filter?

You can cut the bag but only cut it up a wee bit. You'll then be able to replace all the media back into the bag again once its done.

The new filter media is some sort of circular "cubes" that Hagen makes for their filter systems. It's a stacked filter with a foam cutout, charcoal layer, and then the biomedia cubes. If I only cut a small portion of my filtered media, will it be enough bacteria to filter the tank with my fish properly?