New fish tank

[DJYates]

I was just wondering, my brother is setting up his new fish tank and he will have to go through the cycling process and some people have said that to help speed the process up you can add plants or gravell from a mature tank.
could you add water from a mature tank and would it help the cycling process

 

[guppy_man]

and you should add some flake food so it will be cycled in or somthing i did it,
i think it helped.
yes you should add plants when ever you feel like doing so i dont know about the gravel part but that might be ok.
good luck with your new tank

 

[jflowers]

Gravel from an established tank will help speed up the cycling process, but if you have access to an established tank, why not use some of the filter media too. That way you will have what is called a cloned tank. And if its of similar size to yours, you can start adding fish straight away, just keep an eye on water tests. Using mature tank water won't help in any significant way, so new dechlorinated tap water will do.

Plants won't help the cycling process, but can survive it with no problems, so plant it when you want, many prefer to do it before the fish go in.

HTH

Jon

 

[DJYates]

Thanks


what do you mean by filter media?

 

[Welsh_Woman]

a bit of the sponge in the filter, take a bit out of the other tank and put it in the new tank filter

 

[jflowers]

Media...
The material inside your filter that filters the water. Depending on your filter type, you may have three types of filtration. Mechanical - sponges and filter floss, - bioloical - the sponges and maybe some porous material, Chemical - carbon and/or others that absorb chemicals from the water.

If you want to clone a filter, then its the biological stuff you need to use. Dont take it all, just half. if you take it all then the tank you take it from will need to be cycled again!

Jon

 

[DJYates]

one problem........the new tank has an undergravel filter

 

[jflowers]

ahhh, well then, the filter media is the gravel, sorted, go and get that gravel. Under gravel filters are not my fav, but they work.

Jon

 

[DJYates]

Thanks

 

[jflowers]

A word of caution. Adding that gravel will not be as good as adding a sponge from another filter into a new filter. Removing the gravel from the origional tank will displace a lot of the bacteria. It will speed up the cycle though, faster than when adding gravel to a tank that uses another type of filter, but don't expect it to be upto full speed. I would get a test kit, add ammonia to the tank and test the next day for ammonia and nitrIte. Repeat for a couple of days. If it stays at 0 ammonia and 0 nitrIte, go for it, but slowly, not all your fish at once.

Jon