Transfer question

[Sarah]

My older brother and I are moving into a house together in a few weeks, and need to move fishtanks. I have a 50 gallon (FOWLR) currently, and will be slowly moving everything into the new 125 gallon. Eric has a 240 FW pirahna tank, and wants to get a new filter for it. Right now there's a giant Eheim on his tank, and its full of bio balls. If I fill my 125 with saltwater and 4 inches of sand, can I rinse out his filter and run it in my 125, allowing the FW bacteria die-off from the filter to cause it to cycle? Or should I completely clean the filter out and cycle the tank some other way? My 50 gallon is getting set up there, so I'm not in any hurry to cycle the new tank and get everyone moved in...Any other helpful hints or ideas for moving large tanks are appreciated! I'm excited to have both of these tanks in our living room (yay for a basement duplex with a concrete floor, hehehe)

[AW2EOD]

A canister will not be enough/adequate filtration for that large of a tank.

I'd take your 50gal. and convert it into a sump for the larger tank, and add a good protien skimmer.

[Sarah]

Then why does Eheim make a filter big enough to handle 400 gallons (we have the 2260 model)? Just curious...

[oscar83]

every company says on the box of their products that this filter is good for so many gallons whatever it may be. but most of the time for our purposes it is inadequate. what you want to look at is the GPH rating. In most freshwater tanks you want to be turning your water over at least 5x an hour. in saltwater, reefs especially, you want to turn your water over at least 10x an hour. HTH