dazzler

hi guys, i am about ready to start cycling, and was wondering if i can squeeze the good bacteria for a old filter onto my new filter tghe filters are totally different and of different sizes so swapping them around is fairly hard.
so is it possible to squeeze the good stuff onto my say white filter floss to kick start the grandaddy tank off

thanks as always for your knowledge
regards darren

JMatt1983

i had this problem when i set up my new tank, i had an aquaclear 20, which uses bags, and on my new tank it has an aquatech 20-40 which uses pads, i just took one of the bags from my old filter and stuffed it into the area behind the pads. the result is my new 20G tank is cycled in less than 2 weeks

dazzler

hmmm yes i see what you are saying. but im going from a power head which has about a 15cm long x 5cm square piece of back bio sponge and was wondering if i could fit this inside the cannister which it wont do happily. and it leaves me without a filter in my 10g guppy tank thats why i checking to see if the brown "good stuff" can be squeezed onto say my white filter floss to kick start the cycle

regards darren

BristolBulldog

The short story.
i did this two days ago. i transfered the existing water (50% existing, 50% new), and did sponge squeezes. I had to put the fish in same day, they died (except crayfish). New fish in tank on day three, all fine. do 30% water change each day for a week.

Not a pro, so others may disagree, but it worked for me.

JMatt1983

its probably better if you could spare a small peice off the sponge and use it to seed the new filter

bristol, what you did is known as cycling with fish, the sponges squeezing probably didn't do what you though it was doing, it was more likely the amonnia produced by the fish waste that caused your tank to cycle

dazzler

o.k so this is what i am gonna do: take out the black sponge from my filter and squash it inside my cannister filter, how long will it need to be in there for before it seeds??

also this will leave me filterless in my 10g guppy tank until the new filter seeds. is that going to be a problem in itself??

atmmachine816

I would if possible cut the sponge in halve so there's stil filter in the 10g, you don't want it to be filterless or just do it the long way and cycle fishless, if you want you can add pure ammonia or that bio-spiral to speed it up, but if you go fishless that gives you a month or so to decide on your scape for your fish and add plants and get it all set.