Jendayi

I have an extra whisper filter in my cycled 5 gallon right now, trying to seed it with the beneficial bacteria. It's been in there since Sunday night, so about 2 days now. About how long do I need to leave this filter running in the cycled tank before I can move the filter material to an uncycled tank?

Also, will this tank be considered cycled once I've moved the new filter material in? IE should I stop using Prime in this tank and just go with NovAqua+?

Thanks again for all your help!

sgould

I am thinking you should leave it in the cycled tank for 1-2 weeks to seed it, but that is just guess-work...see if someone else has better information. Reguardless, I would not consider the tank fully cycled without testing the water to confirm it. It may significantly speed the cycling along, but it may not get you 100% there. No substitute for testing, I am afraid.

Luniyn

Also up the feeding a bit on the tank. You want to create a larger need for good bacteria to grow. Otherwise you won't get much actually growing on the other media. It will only grow enough that there is food to supply. So if there isn't extra ammonia in the tank there won't be anything for the new colonies to eat and they will die off before they have a chance. Once you remove the additional media, skip a day on feeding to normalize the ammonia output back to a reasonable amount for the original filter.

Jendayi

Thanks for the replies! Adding extra food makes very good sense, ty for that tip. All that's in my cycled tank right now is a fairly good size apple snail (I think I got most of her babies out!) so I will go back to adding some extra flake food.

I have the API master test kit, so I will definitely be testing my water. I just never really thought about having a 'cycled' tank with only the filter for the bacteria. Just so much to learn!