Cycling Hospital/quarantine Tank

[rowdyates]

Hi All,

Given my first venture into fish keeping hasn't quite gone to plan, in that 2 of my guppies died of what I believe is parasites, I've managed to get a small tank from some friends 18"x10"x10" which I'm going to use as a hospital/quarantine tank. So I've bought a 50w heater which should be ok and a fluval plus2 internal filter. My question is, if I want to use the tank at short notice then obviously I can't wait for it to cycle, if I ran the new filter in my cycled tank, how long would it have to stay in there to acquire bacteria? If this is too long what's the next best thing, my two tanks have differet filters so I can't swap sponges or anything?

Thanks,

Keith

 

[WILDER]

Or you just remove abit of mature filter sponge out of the main tank filter, then add it to the quarantine filter, when needed..

 

[rowdyates]

I suppose I could look to stuff one of the new filter sponges into the case from the old filter somehow, how long would it have to be in there to acquire the bacteria though?

Cheers,

Keith

 

[WILDER]

How long has the main tank been set up, as the sponge should instantly cycle it.

 

[rowdyates]

Main tank has been running since start of September, reading my previous reply even confused me! What I was trying to say is if I can get one of the sponges out of the new filter into say the top of the filter currently running in my tank, how long would it have to be there before it became populated with the appropriate bacteria, if it was say a day then taht's all I would need to do the day before setting up the hospital/quarantine tank, but if I was looking at needing it in there say a week then I would need to get it in sooner, maybe having it in there all the time on "standby". Hope this makes sense

Cheers,

Keith

 

[WILDER]

You could always run the hospital filter in the main tank, and just remove it when you wan't it, it can take a few weeks it depends for the bacteria colony to grow.