Newbie Media Question

I have a freshly fishless cycled tank that has had it's new residents-2, for a week and they doing great. I am working on getting a quarantine tank set up, and I am thinking of making a change to my current filter's media. The filter I have is an aquaclear 50 on a 20 gallon long. My thought is to add a second sponge on top of the current cycled sponge then remove the current carbon bag, replace with purigen then the bag of bio media on top of that. 3 questions I have-

1. Will it mess with my tank at all if I add an additional new sponge and remove the carbon bag and replace with purigen?
2. My thought is by adding the second sponge that it will grow beneficial bacteria thus instantly cycling a quarantine tank, is this accurate?
3. Any benefit to adding any filter floss to the mix?

Any input would be appreciated. Thank you!

 

I chose to replace the carbon in my aquaclears with purigen as well.

A 2nd sponge would be fine too. But really most of your beneficial bacteria is in the bio-balls. There's a lot on the sponge though too, don't get me wrong!

If I need to cycle a new tank, I steal some of the bioballs and use those rather than a sponge. But I am sure using a seeded sponge would help seed a new tank too. But the sole purpose of those bio-balls is to house beneficial bacteria. So I naturally use those when seeding a new tank!

I hope that helps!

 

Thank you for your response, do you think there would be any value instead to doing some filter floss in place of the second sponge and then adding a second bag of bio balls?

 

Thank you for your response, do you think there would be any value instead to doing some filter floss in place of the second sponge and then adding a second bag of bio balls?

Sounds good to me!! Having more bio-balls gives you more surface area to collect BB which is good!! And it gives you the ability to "steal" more of them when seeding a new tank.

And filter floss would be helpful in catching any small particles that get past the sponge. So I think that would work great!

 

Ok. So I updated my filter with what I mentioned. I kept the sponge filter, just rinsing in tank water, then replaced the charcoal with a layer of filter floss then a bag of purigen then another layer of filter floss, followed by 2 bags of bio balls. I have the oldest bio bag on top of the new one, but the water is not totally submerging it. The top portion of the bio bag is sticking out of the water. Is this an issue?

 

Yes the parts of the top bag that are not wet/moist will not have the BB on it.

Maybe you can remove one of the filter floss layers.

 

Ok. That is what I thought. I will make that change tonight. I pushed most down last night and was able to get most of it submerged, but still not totally. Thanks!