When Upgrading A Cannister Filter

[markandhisfish]

as soon as i can afford it i plant to upgrade from my eheim pro2 2028 to a pro3 2080

the pro2 is well matured having been run on my tank since october and somebody elses tank before that for around 18 months

the plani is get the 2080 put in all the mature media from the 2028 top it up with new media and run it on its own straight away.

sound ok?

 

[Truck]

should be, but sometimes you can get ammonia and nitrite spikes, so just keep the buckets on standby

 

[minxfishy]

Should be ok, but test regularly to make sure all is working fine. Normally I would have said no problem at all, however Ive found that Im having a mini cycle in my tank at the moment even though all my mature media was immediately trf and should have been able to cope but it isnt, so just test daily for the first week or so to be sure.

 

[markandhisfish]

thats what i thinking . im working on the assumption thats ill still have the same bio-mass in the filter just in a bigger cannister.

 

[minxfishy]

Just make sure you completely cover the new media in the mature media so that the water is hitting the mature media 1st, as the only thing I can come up with is that the larger flow of my new filter is washing the water thru quicker and not giving it enough time thru the media, thus causing some water not to be 'cleaned' on its way thru.

 

[markandhisfish]

what i was thinking is having each chamber ( if possible) around 75% mature media 25% new . probably wont be able to do this for a goodd few months yet but when i do do it the last thing i need is a mini cycle as i have an L081 golden nugget and these guys dont react too well to sudden changes in water paramaters