KyWildFish

This past weekend my brother came up and got to see my new hobby. He watched my fish for quite a while and seemed really interested in the tank. He mentioned that he wanted one of his own but is going to be out of the country for over a month and will wait till he gets back. I mentioned that I could use my tank to seed his and speed his cycle. I have read that some substrate will work foir this and heard mention of using a sponge. What's the best way to give him a good starter culter?

(also my tank is fully cycled!!!! WOOHOO!!!, 6 weeks people. Dont fish cycle, its been a royal pain. But I am still excited!)

Chief_waterchanger

A normal sponge for a sponge filter or dense sponge that is made of undyed materials (a fresh, never used sponge) left in the tank for a few weeks can then be transfered to his tank to seed it, or give him used filter media to seed the tank. (Make sure he doesn't put fish in the tank until the test readings are where they should be for a cycled tank or atleast a week or two on a seeded tank, please. ) A net of gravel substrate would work also.. a simple onion-bag net material with a baseball sized portion.

Lucy

That's great, by the time he gets back, his tank will be cycled and resist the temptation to buy fish prematurely.

KyWildFish

Ah! This is true. I will mention it to him. He's good at finding bargans, I will get him started looking for a tank before he leaves (in Nov or Dec)

sirdarksol

When I seed a new tank, I just take one of the two pieces of filter media out of my "old" tank and put it in the filter for the "new" tank. This sometimes takes a pair of scissors to achieve, but it's always worked, and I've never had any ammonia or nitrites in a tank I've done this with (I've always started with much less stock than the old tank had. For example, I took the media out of a tank with a koi and a goldfish and put it in a tank that had a glassfish and three gold barbs)