Fast cycling for a 5 gal nursery

[perfectjukebox]

I've got a 5 gal tank set up as a nursery, but it served as a hospital recently, so I cleaned everything.

It has no gravel, no live plants, and it filtered with a box filter. It hold 2 White Clouds. So cycling should be about 4-6 seeks, but I was wondering if I could speed things up a bit...

I was thinking of running a small Penn Plax Small World Filter or Elite Sponge Filter in my cycled main tank for a while then transfer it to the 5 gal.

Seems logical to me, but would it be faster than regular cycling with fish?

[Sploke]

If you can either seed the filter with some cycled media, or run a second filter on an established tank for a week or so then transfer it, you'll pretty much instant-cycle the new tank. You may get a small ammonia spike, but that should be about it. When I set all my tanks back up, I waited 6 weeks to cycle the first one, then every time I set up a new one I pulled a fistful of cycled lava rock out of the filter to seed the new one.

[perfectjukebox]

Thanks. So a week or two in an established tank should be enough to get a filter seeded.

I had to ask since the box filter in the 5 gal tank does not use the same filter material as my AC filter.

I've got some dwarf cichilds in the main tank and the females are looking a little heavier than normal. I would really like to be ready when the time comes to isolate the fry.

[Dan06]

Take your establish sponge, rinse it in a bucket of tank water and let your new sponge sit in the bucket for a couple minutes. This will allow some of the nitrifying bacteria to attach to your new media and will instantly cycle the tank. I would feed lightly, to help 'excersize' the nitrifying bacteria and really establish a large, healthy colony in the tank.

[perfectjukebox]

Tanks. What I will do is actually do a combination of the 2 methods. I really want this to work and I don't want to take any chance. It has to work perfectly: it is for a nursery.

Thank you both.

[twig]

if it goes slow you can squeeze sponges into your intake to help ...

just get the new media dirty as hell ...

personally i think that will see a cycle abeit a short one.

The most sureproof method is to have a filter already running on a tank =P Stolen media is good too if you can get enough without jeoperdizing the other tank.

[perfectjukebox]

So I added an algae ball and a thick Egeria clipping in there now. I bought 2 amanos for my main tank (hair algae issue) and I was putting them in the 5 gal for quarantine and getting them a little fatter so that my Agassiz male would not be too tempted. Then I noticed...

A single tiny fry? with a blue glow under proper lighting... One single White Cloud fry?.. (2 WC are cycling the tank, 4 weeks in the process...) What else could it be? I added some floating plants. (paternal instinct I guess)...
So I guess the cycle must be well on its way, if not done. I'd like to add just 1/4 inch of fine gravel in there with some other algae balls and see what happens with that WC couple. And if there is Agassiz fry, I'll just crank up the temperature a bit and put it in there.

Meanwhile, I've got an Elit Sponge Filter (the model that mounts on the side with 2 suckers) runnig in the main tank. I'm not a big fan of the huge bubbles. (very loud and makes waves: I like my bubbles fizzling) But I really like current it creates, it keeps floating plants away from the AC filter water flow.

Can I fix it using a small airline airstone in the filter while keeping an effective sponge filter?

So 3 questions out of this:

1- Will changing the airline ending change the effectivness of the sponge filter?

2- How long does it take for an Amano Shrimp to grow half an inch?

3- Can I put a fine layer of gravel and algae balls in a nursery tank? (I guess I have to...)