Kick Starting The Cycling Procedure

[Dave L]

Hi guys,

Well I have had my 6 x 2 x 2 for a few months now but I have been waiting on a furniture manufacturing friend to build my cabinet.

After a long wait he's finally started it and now I have my mind in gear in preparation for the preparations...

I've seen the additives available to help or eliminate the cycling process along with all the doubts on their effectiveness. I decided I would just go with the fishless cycle for which there is loads of support on this forum (thanks for all this info guys).

Another friend of mine has an established planted tank, would there be any benefit of him rinsing his external filter sponge into a bag and then me using it to 'seed' my tank.

How else could I benefit from his planted tank?

Thanks in advance

Dave

 

[gaz gun man]

ask him nicely if you can swap some of your new media with his mature media, aslong as you dont change too much he should not have any problems and you will have some bacteria to kick start thigs

 

[OldMan47]

It might do a lot of good to rinse his filter in your tank water. That way you would be seeding the new filter with some bacteria from the old. At that point a fishless cycle should go much faster than without the seeding. You may get much of the same benefit of using water the filter was rinsed out in.

 

[doresy]

ask him nicely if you can swap some of your new media with his mature media, aslong as you dont change too much he should not have any problems and you will have some bacteria to kick start thigs

Excellent idea.

Try to avoid the temptation of buying any 'get cycled quick' solutions (it's just putting fuel in the LFS owner's Merc!) Especially 'Cycle' which is a bottle of dead bacteria.......useless!

 

[Dave L]

Thanks for the quick replies guys,

I'm not so sure he'll want to let me delve into his filter for media but I don't think he'll mind me stealing a bit of tank water and rinsing his filter sponge in it.

Before I seed the tank I'll need to fill it of coarse. Would it be OK to dechlorinate once the tank is filled then seed it the next day?

Thanks again

Dave

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yes, providing yuou dechlorinate before adding the 'seeded' water then yes.

do ask him if you can swap a bit of media though, it'll be significantly more effective than squeezing out the sponge in some water.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi there Dave,

Really great you are planning and exchanging information pretty far ahead, unusual & good for you! As a beginner myself who has just been playing around with and learning about fishless cycling, I have maybe 3 things to add (sort of from the "feelings" side, rather than the technical, lol.)

First, I would like to agree with oldman47 in that when I did a "pure" fishless with all new equipment and no seeding whatsoever, there was a long slow period of "nothing" where I would have loved to have had -anything-, including water or "squeezings" from a mature aquarium. There is at least the hope that it might be a small help!

Second, I would like, however, to agree with Miss Wiggle that the overall consensus we see here on TFF is that truly effective "mature media seeding" is most reliably done with an actual media transfer. Taking only 1/3 of a given type of biomedia from the filter of a mature tank will usually have no effect on that tank and will constitute an almost guaranteed huge speed-up in your fishless cycling process. It is customary to supply the donator with some nice new media for his/her supply cabinet.

Third, lest you have any doubt, doing a fishless cycling process has at its endpoint a wonderful feeling of accomplishment associated with it. The process itself necessarily involves some back and forth interaction here and is the perfect stage for some learning about what's really going on with these filters and with your water -- by the end of it you feel much more ready to deal with your fish and tank in a long term way. It also gives time for a much longer and better interaction here about the stocking of your aquarium, which turns out to be a bigger topic than many would anticipate!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Dave L]

Thanks again everyone, MW & waterdrop.

I will certainly be taking your advice on board. It's still going to be another couple of weeks or so before my tank cabinet is complete. In the meantime I guess I'm going to have to put my spending head on and gather all the gear together that I need to get started.

I decided to go with the Eheim 2180 Filter and will be ordering this week. I have a 6ft 8 x 36W Luminaire on it's way (not a huge amount of light but enough to get me started hopefully and I can upgrade it if necessary to 8 x 54W later). I'm going with play sand and will terrace a little with some slate. I also have some nice big pieces of Cornish Bogwood coming this week which I'll boil up and soak for a couple of weeks.

Right, off to do some research on plants.

Thanks again

Dave.

 

[Dave L]

Well, my new light unit arrived yesterday and the Eheim Filter arrived today.

I took the light down to the guy who is making the cabinet so he could measure up for the hood. He has a 6x2x2 Jewel set up in his office. I talked to him about having some of his media to help kick start mine when the tank is ready. He suggested I just couple up my filter on his tank and leave it running a couple of weeks. Great, so I set to and got it running.

I have a couple of small concerns regarding this; firstly, is it possible to have too much filtration? I wouldn't want to create any problems on his set up.

Secondly, he is currently having a bit of algae bloom which he is struggling to find the reason for. As an aside, he's had his water tested by the LFS and has been told it's in good order. Is this problem likely to get carried over to my tank if it hasn't been sorted in the next week or so?

I have recommended TFF as a great resource for hep and inspiration, hope he gets registered.

Any advice/recommendations appreciated.

Regards

Dave.

 

[Corleone]

It's not usually possible to have too much filtration, but you can have too much flow from filters. Since his tank is pretty big, I doubt your filter will add any problems. Multiple filters tend to make less flow than one big one anyway, as it spread the output around more.

You might bring algae back with your filter, but just having algae isn't enough to cause an algae bloom, and algae is usually present in the tank anyway. If the conditions are right for a bloom, it wouldn't matter where the algae came from, really, and if conditions aren't right for a bloom, adding algae out of another tank's bloom won't trigger one.

 

[waterdrop]

There is only one aspect of filtration where there can be a problem with over-filtration: flowrate & circulation. For some fish and some plants (not all) it is possible to create an environment that just has too much fast moving water. In your particular case I believe you may have the option to turn the flowrate way down on the filter and you can re-position the spray bar or whatever output device you have so that it points backwards at the glass tank wall or some such solution. Low flowrate will not hamper the introduction of good bacteria into your media at all.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Dave L]

It's not usually possible to have too much filtration, but you can have too much flow from filters. Since his tank is pretty big, I doubt your filter will add any problems. Multiple filters tend to make less flow than one big one anyway, as it spread the output around more.

You might bring algae back with your filter, but just having algae isn't enough to cause an algae bloom, and algae is usually present in the tank anyway. If the conditions are right for a bloom, it wouldn't matter where the algae came from, really, and if conditions aren't right for a bloom, adding algae out of another tank's bloom won't trigger one.

Hi Corleone,

Many thanks for the quick response and the advice. Made me feel much better about it all.

Something I noticed after I installed the filter. After about 10 minutes it seemed like his fish were really enjoying the extra flow. It was like they were queuing up to have a play in it

Thanks again

Dave

 

[Dave L]

There is only one aspect of filtration where there can be a problem with over-filtration: flowrate & circulation. For some fish and some plants (not all) it is possible to create an environment that just has too much fast moving water. In your particular case I believe you may have the option to turn the flowrate way down on the filter and you can re-position the spray bar or whatever output device you have so that it points backwards at the glass tank wall or some such solution. Low flowrate will not hamper the introduction of good bacteria into your media at all.

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks waterdrop.

Yes, I did set the flow rate to about half before I left. He didn't have the spray bars fitted, just like a nozzle affair. Once he saw the reaction fromthe fish he said he's going to swap over to them.

I'll not be seeing him again until after the weekend so I'll check it all out again on Monday.

Thanks once again

Dave.

 

[waterdrop]

Great Dave, glad it helped.

My son Oliver and I discovered that our rear-positioned spraybar is sending a flow across the top surface toward the front which then reaches the bowfront glass and is channeled downward. The surprise when we got fish the other day is that the bowfront narrows and strengthens the flow just enough that the fish are all having a ball riding over to the top front and then "going down the waterfall" which they seem to love and keep doing it. Its not too strong but you can notice them doing it.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

WD there are lots of fish that I've had over the years that love to play in water currents. My first experience with it was some cories and mollies that liked to play in an early model HOB that I had running on a 120 gallon tank 20 or more years ago. The fish continue to show that reaction when there is a strong current in any tank. I even have a betta that takes a ride on the current from a power head in my 40 breeder. Of course he doesn't ride alone, the platies enjoy it too.