I am switching to a canister filter on my 29 gallon community tank this saturday and I was wondering on how to transfer my BB to the canister. I know I could leave all the filters running and wait a few weeks for it to gather it's own bacteria but I was wondering if there's any other ways. Could I take the filter pads (The ones with carbon inside them), remove the carbon and just put it into my canister or would that not work? The reason I want this quicker is I gave a friend a 20 long and some filter media along with it but with the new canister filter I am giving him my old HOB filters for better filtration as the one he currently has is just enough for the current stock. If it's needed I could run them all together for a week with the media transfer to help with successfully seeding the canister. But if none of this works and risks crashing my cycle let me know and I'll just run them together for a couple weeks and still take some of the media incase. Additionally, I have 2 Sponge filters, plants and rocks and clay pots that also hold BB in the tank.
It be best if you had extra media ready when you make the transfer. You should be able to take whatever is in your HOB and place it into the canister. But since you have the carbon filter pad as your main source I would actually run the canister and the HOB at the same time until the canister is able to hold the tank itself. Your way would work but depending on the canister it depends if you have the room. Some canisters are not big enough to put a pad, again depends on the size. So you might be able to cut the carbon out and fold the pad into a ball and place it into the canister. But the problem you'll get is that you have all this vacancy with new media but not enough bacteria to take over. So you will need to supplement it with bacteria. I think the easiest way to do this is run both side by side for a month and take the HOB out when you think the canister is ready. It's less risk.
I have cut sponges (6 pieces in total) on the intake tubes of the HOB filters that I could also add to the canister and what I do when replacing a pad is cut the filter pad off and place it on the new one to help keep the BB so I was thinking of doing that for the canister. Also I have 2 HOB filters and one has extra media cut like this so in all I would have 2 1/2 media pads with bacteria on them. Would it be possible to use what I currently have (the 6 cut sponges and 2 1/3 filter pads) to seed the filter and I planned to even with this idea to run them together for 1 to 2 weeks? I know what you're saying though and there's also BB thats in the filter not attached to things I can take out that I would lose too. If this is still about the same idea even with extra media I'll gladly take the month wait than ruin my cycle and risk my fish. I also have these 2 plasic pieces that likely hold BB but I'm not sure if it would fit the canister and after some time I would remove it to give to my friend for the filter.
Even when waiting the month would it be okay to remove the smaller filter to make room for the Canisters equipment?
You should be able to remove the smaller filter as long as you have the canister going to replace the extra filter the tank is losing.
