Maturing New Tank

[tropicaltone]

Hi Everyone,

I have just recently setup a new Tank and I am eager to transfer some of the fish for my old tank, I realise the maturation period for a completely new setup is about 1 month. However this is a little different my old tank uses and Ehiem Ecco external filter the same as I am using on the new setup, I have transferred half the filter media from the old to the new Filter and I have taken half the old tank water.

The question is how long should I wait to introduce some of the hardy fish from my old tank?

I have tested the water and there are no signs of Ammonia but Nitrites and Nitrates are still quite high, I have added a lot of Plants now so hopefully they will take up the Nitrites.

Should I simply wait unitil the Nitrites and Nitrates fall to safe levels? or longer?

 

[rdd1952]

Unless you added ammonia, there never will be any. If there is nitrite and nitrate present, then it is either in your tap water or in your other tank. If you transfered half the media from your other tank, you should have added fish or ammonia immediately. Otherwise, the bacteria you transfered over will die. Transfering water doesn't do anything as bacteria is not free-floating in the water.

The only way a tank can cycle is for you to add ammonia to build the bacteri colony or have fish in it so their waste is the ammonia source. Even when there is enough bacteria to process all thefish waste, the tank still isn't mature until ithas been running long enough to build the slime layers on every thing in the tank which makes the tank less susceptible to a major problem.