bpsmicro

This is mostly for my education. We have two tanks. One has fully cycled and is well-established with healthy happy fish. The second is loitering in the cycle and although it's "stable" and also has healthy fish, just isn't moving along quickly.

Is it technically feasible to attempt to "transfer" some of the good bacteria from the established tank to the newer tank? With the full understanding that there's always a risk of transferring some unknown diseases; could one, for example when doing a water change, transfer some of the water from one tank to the other? What about soaking the filter from the "bad" tank in the water of the "good" tank for a while during a water change?
Ignoring the disease-transmission risk for the moment, is something like this good, bad or neutral?

Brad.

Chief_waterchanger

You actually are talking about a common practice among those of us with multiple tanks. (in mine and Dino's case multiple dozen tanks)... lol.

Take the filter media from the established tank and put it in the filter of the cycling tank. That speeds up the cycle.

almost anything with large amounts of surface area is useful. A net full of gravel from established tank, or filter media, or large piece of driftwood, etc.

You show great potential for fishkeeping as a successful hobbyist by thinking of a technique on your own that even while already in use, you thought up without guidance, very good.

Oh, if you use the filter media idea, leave the filter media in there for a week or so.

bpsmicro

Splendid! Thanks for the encouragement. Technically, one tank is my son's and the other (the established one) my wife's. She doesn't actively participate in the upkeep, delegating to my son. But he's a teenager, so a tad impatient (if you've ever had or been a teenager, you probably understand ). So I do the "research", and make him do all the actual work.

Eventually, after we've made all the mistakes with these smaller tanks, I'll likely invest in a really big one for myself, and actually know what the heck I'm doing up front. :-)

Brad.

Chief_waterchanger

Lol. Multiple Tank Syndrome, it is debilitating.

The good news is: The bigger the body of water (ie. the more gallonage the tank) the easier it is to maintain and more chemically stable it remains.

Glad to help.

I hope you'll continue to enjoy the site for the superb community of friends and aquaintances that are Fishlore.

bpsmicro

Heck yeah! This is one of those amazing places where you can carry on a conversation in near real-time. There are very few forums, fish or otherwise that can make that claim.

Brad.

jsalemi

And just to clarify a bit more, the bacteria you need aren't free-floating in the water -- they only live on surfaces of some type. So just transferring water from one tank to the other does nothing. It's the solid material (the filter cartridge, gravel, decorations) that hold the bacteria.

bpsmicro

Ok, that's really good to know too. Thanks.

sirdarksol

To take it a step further, if you have a number of tanks, it is a good practice, in my opinion, to keep an extra filter running in at least one of the aquariums. This way, if anything happens to kill off the bacteria colonies in more than one tank (needing to medicate multiple tanks at once, for example), there is more filter media to spread around the different tanks.