Alessa

I have been reading the posts about medication killing the cycle of the tanks in which it is used, and I feel sorry about the people that have gone through that... (kinda scary since it can always happen to anyone at virtually any moment). In the middle of thinking all this, I had an idea. Someone else might have had it before, but still:

can the filter of the tank to be medicated, be taken out, replaced by a new one, and then placed in a bucket of water and fed daily with ammonia drops, until the medication is over and out of the main tank with water changes and AC?

comments?

sgould

I wouldn't see why not. On the other hand, there are situations where it would just make more sense to move your fish to a hospital tank and treat them there, never endangering the main tank's cycle. Depends on the circumstances, I suppose.

Alessa

yes, I mean like in cases where the whola tank is endangered and there is no other choice but killing the cycle.

mathas

I would think it would help restart the cycle faster, but I doubt it would completely prevent a recycle.

If I understand the bacterial aspect of a cycled tank correctly, there's exactly enough bacteria throughout an entire cycled tank (filter, substrate, hardscape, etc.) to cope with the bioload. Any excess bacteria would die off from lack of nutrients, and any deficiency would leave ammonia/nitrites present, indicating the tank isn't fully cycled.

If you just preserve what's on the filter, you'd still lose the bacteria on the substrate or driftwood or whatever else. So if you were to use a medication that kills off the beneficial bacteria, I wouldn't think that what you managed to preserve on the filter would be enough by itself to cope with the entire bioload of your tank, but it would likely help restart the cycle more quickly.

Or I could be entirely wrong!

COBettaCouple

I'd probably go with stuffing extra sponges in the filters of other tanks or doing something like that but with new sponges. I'd want to treat and/or sterlize the media in a tank that needed treatment.

clinton1621

Theres one major flaw in your hypothesis....
If you are treating for a disease (parasite, bacteria, or fungal) that requires you to treat the main tank, then you would NOT want to save the filter media from that tank, as it would still be harboring whatever disease you were treating for initially... thus you would just be reintroducing the disease back into the tank when your treatment is over and you put the old filter thats already contaminated back in.

You could however have a "hospital" style tank that you put new media in to build up good bacteria, or even use Bio-Spira in it. That way when you remove the old filters from the main tank after treatment (and after using carbon!) you could just put the newly established filters from the "hospital" tank that are not infected in the main tank and hopefully only go through a couple day mini-cycle. I guess that would be like having a hospital tank for your filters and not for the fish lol!

Alessa

Mathas- yes, I understand that the tank would go into a mini cycle anyway, but it would be faster!

Co- Im talking about emergencies that didnt give time for cycling extra spongees, or people that have nothing but one tank. (although in the case of C.worms you do need sterilization of the whole thing)

clinton1621

It wouldnt just be Camallanus worms... all parasites have a cyst and larval stage which could be trapped in the filter... fungal infections release thousands of spores into the water which could be trapped in the filter... and massive bacterial infections could also spread to the filter media and become trapped. So saving the old filter would be a bad idea all around.

Alessa

there has got to be a way! is there any way to make home made biospira?

clinton1621

I wish there was lol! I would be cooking some up right now

Alessa

if there just were a way of cooling off some nitrifying bacteria from a healthy tank and saving it on a vacuum bag on the refigerator...hmm... gosh im just bacteria obsessed am i not?

clinton1621

Hmm... I think refridgerating it would keep it alive for a couple of weeks or so. Thats basically what Bio-Spira does. Most bacteria (good and bad) can withstand being refridgerated and will actually live for a long period of time because they go into a semi-dormant state. Some bacteria can even withstand being frozen, I dont think nitrifying bacteria is one of those however lol. I would say sticking some media in the fridge (in a container of tank water) directly out of the tank would cool it down slow enough that it would survive... it would be an interesting experiment at least!

Fishies-for-me

Maybe you should devote your life to developing homemade bacteria colonies and make millions of dollars doing it...that would benefit all of us...lol

Alessa

i mught just go ahead and try, see for how long they are capable of remaining alive.