Will this work, and how soon can fish go in?

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rainbowprizimz

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Sep 13, 2003
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Hi and thanks for reading. I have a fully cycled 20G, HOB filter with a sponge. I was hoping to start up my old 10G, also with a HOB filter. I used gravel from my 20G to put in the 10G, and filled the 10G with water strictly from the 20. I was planning on cutting a little piece of the sponge from the 20's filter, and putting that into the 10's filter. Will this work to establish a good bacterial source, and how soon would I be able to transfer a few fish?
Any comments will help and are greatly appreciated.
 
If you're going to use material from one tank to introduce bacteria into another, you either need to put the fish in pretty much right away, or just go through the whole fishless cycle and then put the fish in. The reason for this is that the bacteria needs food or it will die quickly. Without either fish to produce waste or pure ammonia, you will lose all of these bacteria. You don't really need to worry about moving water from the older tank, because this doesn't have any real benefit. The gravel and filter media is what will help. So you should probably put some more gravel and/or filter media in the new tank and add some ammonia to completely cycle the tank and then add fish, or just add very few fish at a time. Hope that helps :)
 
Great! That's what I was hoping someone would say. I'll be sure to add a few fish now, and put in that filter media as well. They are guppies so they are pretty hardy when it comes to fishless cycling. Thanks again!!
 
Oops I meant cycling with fish in the tank, my first set of guppies did ok with it, so I'm sure this will work out.
 
Filter squeezin's

If you will set up the new tank with dechlorinated water and gravel and everything and meanwhile go a bit long on the filter cleaning on the old tank. Let it get rather dirty.

Then take the sponge out of the old tank and squeeze it clean in the new tank. You will not be able to see through the tank it will be so murky. Now, check the tank temp, around 78 or so, have the heater running if necessary. go away and come back tomorrow.

The tank will be all clear, the muck will be in the filter where it belongs and you can add a (nearly) full set of fish. If you are not ready for the fish, add a few drops of ammonia daily, maybe up to 1/4 teaspoon, to keep the tank cycled.
 
That sounds like an excellent idea too. Unfortunatly I just cleaned the 20G filter a week ago, so it is fairly clean. Also I already acclimated the 4 teenage guppies into the 10G to start conventional cycling. But I will keep that in mind for my next tank. Thanks!
 
You can still transfer bacteria

Even though the pad was cleaned a week ago, you can still transfer a lot of bacteria to the new tank and help keep those fish from being permanently damaged by the ammonia.

Pour the filter squeezin's right into the tank, at the filter intake, most will be sucked right up. I have even done this to a Q tank with a sponge filter and it did not seem to harm the fish. You can add some squeezin's every few days if you are reading any ammonia in the new tank, the old tank will reproduce them easily.

I just did this to set up a 20Long for 23 1" discus babies. I have a Seachem Ammonia Alert in this tank, never saw the slightest bit of ammonia, though I do big water changes there daily also.
 
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