cycling.....not the regular kind (sorry)

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Dr_Woo

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Jul 4, 2004
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Hello everyone, i finally got a stand for my 29 gal. and i'm lookin to start it up this week. I have a well established 10 gal. and i put my new bought filter in there to collect bacteria. Here is my first question, how long do i have to leave the filter on (also put in my old filter cartridge in the filter to collect on the larger cartridge). Also, i have a couple of wild caught crawdads in there and i was wondering if i add them will it hurt (the cycle or the crawdads)? And my last question is after putting the new filter on the new tank how long for the bacteria to spread throughout the tank (after this part i wanna put the crawdads in to create some waste for the bacteria)?

Sorry about the questions, but i went through a couple of sites that talked about cycling, and none were as specific about this as i wanted.

Also, i know people are gonna tell me about the danger of parasites with wild-caught critters, but i think these are clean, so please no talking about that :D .
 
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You'll want to leave the new filter running on your old tank for about a month. The bacteria needs a source of ammonia as soon as you put the new filter onto the new tank. They don't need to spread out in the tank. They'll do that over time. The filter media is where most of the bacteria is anyways. In other words, put fish in right away.

I have no idea about the crawdads though.
 
spartan pretty much covered the cycling part.

The crawdads they are very hardy. But however they can carry some parasites on them from your local creek,lake,pond where ever your catching them. If there are no fish in that tank ( which I hope there isn't because crawdads will eat any fish you put in there unless it's much bigger then the crawdad ), I wouldn't concern myself with parasites. They should be able to handle the cycle. Just make sure you keep them well feed but still keep the tank clean. If you want to find more information on them just do a google search there are quite a few sites out there about crawdads :) Good luck :)
 
aww crap.....i thought this way it would take like a week at max. This sucks. How about if I let my old filter run in the new tank, would that make it faster?
 
aww crap.....i thought this way it would take like a week at max. This sucks. How about if I let my old filter run in the new tank, would that make it faster?
 
If you put the old filter on the new tank, what bacteria will be in the old tank? Remember, most of the bacteria are in the filter.
 
I do not think that will be a problem for the old tank because i change the filter media almost every month, and fish are very healthy. I just want to kno if that will be quicker. I mean i could always just leave the new filter for a month in the old tank with one or two fish while the other tank has the old filter, and i could add fish in there quicker :D .

Or how about i just go buy some bio spira.......i heard it works great.
 
If you are changing all of your filter media "almost every month" then you are throwing that tank into a mini cycle "almost every month." IMO, that is not a good idea.
 
HAHA, what do you know about fishkeeping.....:D


Probably more than me, but what do u mean by all filter media, there is only one filter cartridge in my 10 gal. that i change about every month or so (longer if i get lazy). My water and fish are fine when i do this and i don't think any parameters go up. Might have to buy a test kit to check it out.
 
Originally posted by Dr_Woo
HAHA, what do you know about fishkeeping.....:D


Probably more than me, but what do u mean by all filter media, there is only one filter cartridge in my 10 gal. that i change about every month or so (longer if i get lazy). My water and fish are fine when i do this and i don't think any parameters go up. Might have to buy a test kit to check it out.
Click to expand...

Excuse me, but someone is trying to help you and the least you can do is listen. If you don't like there advice then don't listen to it. Making rude comments about it makes the situation worse.

I agree throwing away old cartridges can put your tank out of balance....the way to season a new filter cartridge is take a peice of the old cartridge and put it behind the new one to get the bacteria colony back and up and running in your filter....
 
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