Whooooo!

RobberyinCSharp · Dec 22, 2011

Hi everyone!

This gal's Xmas is gonna be awesome! Her professor had an old 20-gallon tank lying around that he never used so she received it as a gift!!!

I currently purchased a Hagen AquaClear 30 filter, which I know uses foam, carbon and the biomedia. Here's my conundrum:
I'd like to somehow expose the biomedia to the media in my 10-gallon tank, which is already fully cycled. I'm hoping to cut down my cycle time by allowing the bacteria on the old media to colonize and undergo mitosis on the new media, instead of cycling the tank from scratch.

Does anyone know the best way to do this? I'm currently using a TopFin10 power filter with your everyday bio-bag insert.

Thanks everyone!

pablothebetta · Dec 22, 2011

You can just take out some of the media from the 10 gallon and put it into the new filter with the new media and allow it to grow that way. Take some of the media from the new filter out and put it in the 10 gallon, sort of do a filter media swap. That was both parts of new media will grow bacteria. After a while, you can swap them back, new media filled with bacteria. If you're replacing the 10 gallon with the 20 gallon and don't want to do anything with it once the 20 gallon is all set up, you can put all the media from it into the new filter and just fill in any of the space in the compartment with new media.

BigbruiserAl · Dec 22, 2011

Once established bacteria replicates very fast, so take 1/3 media from your established one place in new filter in new tank, feed with ammonia (fishless cycle) and you will cut down the cycle time massively :good:

the_lock_man · Dec 22, 2011

BigbruiserAl said:
Once established bacteria replicates very fast, so take 1/3 media from your established one place in new filter in new tank, feed with ammonia (fishless cycle) and you will cut down the cycle time massively

What m'learned colleague neglected to mention is that you should replace what you take out from the estblished filter with new media from the new filterk, as this allows the established bacteria to replace what they have lost, leaving you with no issues in the established filter. (Hope you don't mind me butting in, Al) :good: