How Long Will It Take
- Thread starter Boohoo
- Start date
My guess is that you are probably correct there. Removing seeding material from the 10g might cause the 10g to go back into a mini cycle if you remove too much and anything from a 10g would probably be too insignificant to really speed up the 55g cycle at all.Boohoo said:
You are right it will be a lot easier than the necessary water changes to keep ammonia and nitrites down in a fishy cycle, the hardest part is just looking at an empty tank.
I just bought a 55g a couple weeks ago as well, but am slowly building a stand and putting together all of the components for it. I’m planning on doing a plant cycle for that one so hopefully looking at plants everyday will distract me from the lack of fish
Well said, not to mention that once you know how much ammonia per gallon = how many ppm's you just test every couple of days and ad if needed.
Incorrect assumption, but not uncommon. A cycled tank is a cycled tank. I would not steal huge amounts of media or anything else from any tank, but in cycling the 10g, you already went through the process of estabilishing a solid bacteria colony. Reproduction is most likely as high as it will be based on available ammonia. Borrow something from the ten, and let er rip. Any seed is better than no seed, bigger seeds are better than little seeds so on and so forth.
Cycling without a seed gives you usually 2-3 weeks before any noticeable change occurs and then another 2-3 to complete the process and have the tank ready. A small seed will shave off a good bit of that first 2-3 weeks, and a big seed will shave off most of the 4-6 total.
It is not a bad idea to be patient and see it through without a seed if you so desire, but in your case it is absolutely unnecessary to do so. Pick your method, and enjoy the experiment, but literally a 1 sq in. piece of filter media will make a load of difference, and you 10 g won't miss it at all.
The best way to visualize this is that your bacteria colony kept multiplying until there wasn't enough food for all of them and some starved. the rest are really thin and hungry just hangin' around. There are no fat ones, so they are all just eating enough to survive and staying really thin. You take away a few and the others have a little more to eat today, they'll get fat and happy and all multiply at once, which of course willl lead to some more staarving and the rest being real thin. if you take away a lot, then there is more food than the rest can eat, and then you have problems. So you could take away a few today, a few more tomorrow, a few more the next day and so on without ever hurting anything. It's only a problem if you take away large percentages, or if you do something too drastically increase the source of food.
dave
Thanks to all for the info. I guess I'm in better shape than I thought. So when I'm ready to add the ammonia, I'll rob something, but not too much from my 10g.If my other 10g finishes cycling by then maybe I'll rob something from there.All set now. Once things are underway and I have some readings I will post and you can all let me know how I'm doing.Thanks again.
