tkfury

I'm going to be redoing my 22g (the wood and plants will be coming in as soon as she finds the right piece of wood ). I currently have two cories and a tetra in there but I figured I'd move them to my empty 10g along with the filter and water from the 22g.

Now, when I'm done with the 22g (replacing pretty much everything) do I need to restart the cycle or will it be safe to add the filter and fish back in after a few days? (Plans for my 55g fell through so I'm sticking with my four small tanks until I move out ... already talked my friend into a 55g/75g SW tank when I move in heh.)

sgould

You should be safe doing things as you describe, as the filter houses the biggest concentration of bacteria. It is possible that you may experience a small ammonia spike from losing the bacteria that are also on the gravel and decor you are changing, but I sort of doubt it since you are protecting the filter.

jsalemi

If you're going to be keeping the gravel and just changing everything else, keep the gravel wet, and most of the bacteria in it should survive as well. If you're going to replace the gravel, keep some of the current gravel and put it in something that lets it stay wet, like an old nylon stocking or one of the resealable bags they sell for filter media, and put it in the other tank. Then just move the whole bag back to the original tank to help seed the new gravel with bacteria.

tkfury

I'm keeping most of the gravel, just mixing it with some smoother and darker gravel (I haven't had any problems so far but my cories really like digging in it so I want to make it a little safer for them). I can put what I'm going to use in a bucket with water for when I'm ready for it and what I'm not going to use in the 10g. How long will the bacteria live if just kept wet?

Thanks ^^ I wasn't sure if the filter was going to be enough or ifI was thinking about going about this all the wrong way.

jsalemi

Should live for a couple of days on just the detritus that's in the current gravel. If you like, you could drop a few flakes of food in there when you move it to the bucket to 'feed' them.

COBettaCouple

when we moved, we had our substrata (flat glass marbles) go almost 4 days from when we took it out of the tanks until we put it back into tanks, but all of the tanks quickly got back to cycled status.

sounds like you're ready for the big project.