Is It Ok To Remove 1 Tank Filter Now?

I've had this 5.5 gallon running for 3-4 months with a small HOB and double sponge, the time has come where I want to use the small HOB to start another tank.

The tank is now stocked with about 12 cherry shrimp, 4 tiny rasbora fry and a couple large snails with maybe 100 babies.

My sponge should be able to handle the bio load alone ... right?

 

It should. I ran the same dual sponge filter in my 5.5 and it was enough to handle the bio-load of way too many danio and cory fry and I didn't even have live plants in the tank. Between the plants and sponge filter you should be fine.

 

So I took the HOB off, squeeze cleaned the sponges into some tank water and put in the new tank.
Dosed a few drops of ammonia and 24hrs its still there

I have another sponge in a 3 month old tank that I will pull and put into the tank without cleaning.
Hopefully this will work, Have my first mail order fish coming tomorrow and need this tank ready

 

The BB will only grow out to oxidize the bioload in your established tank, so it will take a few days for BB to multiply and catch up if you’re adding more ammonia to your new setup vs what the bioload was in your established tank. Just test both tanks for the next week or two.

 

Added the 10G double sponge ,a few more bio rings and a piece of dirty sponge to the HOB. This morning everything looked good with a small amount of nitrate.
Excited and nervous. I've been wanting multies since I saw them in a video 4 months ago, not easy to find. Saw them on ebay at 1am last weekend for a good price so I had to buy them.

Process went smoothly and fish look healthy. Just looks like I'm missing 1 fish. The seller shipped a bunch of shells expecting more fish to be in them.