Help With Donated Media

[sjolliff]

Hopefully this sunday im getting 2 tetratecs ex 1200 sponges, from a member on here (rabbut) and replacing my 4 sponges in my fluval 205 with the donated ones,
from pick-up it will take me around 1hr to get them into my filter, he is putting the media in a air tight bag with some aqaurium water
But will it benifit with a bit of flake food to keep it ticking over?

but what do i do once its in?
some people say add fish straight away?

do i add ammonia once a day or wait till it drops to 0 then top up, test every 12 hours??

also what about water changes?, i understand that about a week before adding fish but after cycled you do like a 90% water change?

Thanks in advance steve

 

[drobbyb]

I wouldn't bother with the flake food. If it's only about an hour you should be fine.

Do you already have fish in the tank?

 

[sjolliff]

No, no fish, but i was goin to continue adding ammonia

 

[arobinson1984]

Yes, I would continue to add ammonia. The tank should be nearly cycled after adding the media but better to be safe than sorry!

Andy

 

[sjolliff]

Cheers andy, should i still put in ammonia till i get fish, but a day before i get fish drop the ammonia to 0?
also have much ammonia per day, still do the 24hr till 0, then 12 hour till 0 then so on/
cheers steve

 

[arobinson1984]

I would add the 5ppm of ammonia as you normally would that way you'd probably raise the amount of beneficial bacteria on the media and wait until dropping to zero ammonia and nitrites in 12 hours. Keep it going for about 3 more days after that to make sure it wasnt a one off (by that I meaning adding back upto 5ppm ammonia) and after 3 days if all is good then do large water change and away you go

Andy

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with Andy. Adding mature media (MM) is not a "different" process. It doesn't change any of the rules of fishless cycling. Its just a thing you do at some point along the way during a fishless cycling process and you cross your fingers that it helps speed up that process. If its a nice big donation from a mature filter then it has a very high chance of helping a lot and even in some cases advancing you right to the end of the fishless cycling process but you can't assume that. You still have to watch it "pass the test" as Andy describes and it especially needs the sort of test where we ask "was this a blip or a fluke" that made us think it was finished with its cycle? So it needs a bit of the "qualifying week" type treatment just as much as a normal fishless cycle does.

~~waterdrop~~