Anyone tried this?

[The Zigman]

A guy at the local LFS, which has been around for more than 15 years, suggested to me to take the gravel substrate from my established tank, and use it to seed my new canister filter.. Anyone ever done this before? i knew about the old filter media, but never thought of using the established substrate...

 

[InTr4nceWeTrust]

Never tried it myself, but I know that your substrate will contain some of the bacteria required for a cycle. Even your water will have some of the bacteria floating around in there.

 

[Born4spd]

UM i think it would work great...

In a way most filter media are just a very porous form of gravel...

 

[cheizy]

Yes this would work, but not as effective as say established filter media.

 

[Rbishop]

Provided the tank it comes from has adequate surface agitation and good internal flow, it is as good as any filter media. I do it with my Mag 350s all the time.

Even better if the substrate is coming off a UGF or RUGF.

 

[msjinkzd]

i have done that several times as well in conjunction with filter media...works great.

 

[southpaw]

Should work fine...anything you can add to help a cycle move along faster is always a good thing. I have gravel from my 55g hanging inside of a 10g and 29g I am setting up now in the toe part of some pantyhose

 

[AquariumFish]

if you want to go a step farther ...

after you put it in the filter ... then run your filter on the established tank for a while ...

the 2 tanks I got for Christmas were cycled with the use of established tank filters, water, and a used Magnum 350 in the new ones...

had almost no spike in water parameters.
The levels were about the same as doing a MAJOR water change.