Fishtank Cycled In 2 Days????

Did my fish tank just totally cycle in 2 days?!? Is that possible? I have a 10 gal tank I want as a Betta tank. I added a filter from one of my established tanks with established media pad in it, added tetra safe start beneficial bacteria and a zebra danio 2 days ago.Last night my perimeters were ammonia .25, nitrite .25 and nitrate 10 ppm. This morning it's ammonia 0 nitrite 0 and nitrate 10 ppm. It appears to have cycled, but never saw a tank cycle in 2 days. Is it possible to have already cycled that fast?

 

Well yes, adding media from a cycled tank to a new tank will give you an instant cycle. Folks have been doing that for decades.

 

Ok thanks. I didn't want to appear stupid I knew it would cycle faster, but wasn't expecting it to cycle that fast.

 

Woah that’s so fast I should make a note of this genius

 

Ok thanks. I didn't want to appear stupid I knew it would cycle faster, but wasn't expecting it to cycle that fast.

That is the beauty of having a cycled tank. One NEVER has to go through the long drawn out cycling process again. By moving well seeded media the bottled bacteria it totally unnecessary.

The bacteria on the filter media is the bacteria grown specifically in your water. It doesn't know which tank it is in so after moving it it just happily goes on about its business never even realizing it has been moved.

As long as the bio-load is the same or less in the new tank you shouldn't even experience a mini-cycle. If the bio-load is more (meaning more fish) one may see ammonia and/or nitrites for day or two but soon the bacteria will catch up with the higher bio-load.

 

a tank being cycled just means you have enough beneficial bacteria to process the bioload in the tank. don't add too many fish at once and you're fine.