Saving Old Water...........

TF Keeper UK

Fish Crazy
Joined
Aug 25, 2005
Messages
246
Reaction score
0
Location
Oxford, England
If Ii kept a bucket (50gal) of old cycled water. Then used it if I needed to use my spare tank as an isolation/hospital tank, would this be detrimental to the fish?

Also, would the use of soe stored cycled water, help speed up the cycling process in a new tank?
 
There isn't any need in saving old water unless you are moving a tank in which case you would want to put most of the same water back in and just change 25% or so as in a normal water change. There aren't any beneficial bacteria present in the water. They are all on surfaces, mainly in the filter and on the filter media. When a tank is refered to as being cycled, really, it is the filter that is cycled.
 
Thanks for that Rdd1952. Just a question re cycles. If I carried out a 50%water change and cleaned the filter and ornaments, would that trigger a mini-cycle?
 
It depends on how you clean the filter. The water change in itself wouldn't have any effect on the bacteria unless you didn't use dechlorinator. As for cleaning the filter, all you really need to do is lightly rinse (swish it around) in old tank water or a bucket of dechlorinated water (if you've done like I do sometimes and pour the old tank water out before you remember to rinse the filter). I rinse my filters weekly when I to my water changes. You should not experience any mini cycle from a routine cleaning. The one possible exceptin to this is when you change the filter cartridge. In that case, you should let the old and new cartridge run together for about a week and then remove the old one or, if there isn't enough room in the filter for both, hand the old one in the tank near the waterflow for a week or so ntil the new filter develops enough bacteria.

Now for canister filters, that's a little different. I haven't done a cleaning on mine yet so I can't really say on those. If done properly though, you should have a mini cycle there either.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top