Can't wait to buy a bigger tank and do a fishless cycle.... it will be sooo much less stressful!
You won't have to Tibby. All future tanks can be cloned from the existing established filter.
Hey BTT, good opportunity for you to expand on your favorite ways to clone from an existing filter. Usually queries for this come in the midst of other questions and there seem to be a number of ways recommended by members - I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts!
Cloning can take several forms and to advise on the best way to do it without having full details of the situation can be dangerous. For example, some people ask how to keep their existing tank running whilst cloning the filter for an additional set-up. Others have just bought a new tank and want to transfer everything from the old tank to the new (the main difference i'm trying to portray here is whether the existing tank will continue to run). Other people will have a tank already with fish in which is suffering ammonia spikes and they want to clone from another filter to fix things etc etc.
The main difference as i stated above is whether the old tank is to continue running in addition to the new tank, or to be stripped down to be replaced with the new tank. I shall split my post into 2 sections on this basis.
Cloning an additional filter
There are several ways to do this. I shall address some of them here.
Really? I thought I had to fishless cycle but with some filter media to speed it up! Obviously I haven't read up properly... well i will be asking plenty of questions when the time comes!
This is the first way, Tibby. If you have mature media and want to perform a fishless cycle so you can fully stock your tank all at once, this is a good way to go. Fishless cycle as normal, but the mature media will speed up the process somewhat because you are starting with an established bacteria colony (maybe smaller than what you need, but it is there) rather than starting with no bacteria at all.
Obviously this isn't an option if the new tank is already stocked with fish as i mentioned above.
The next method is to use a piece of mature media and skip cycling altogether. I recently set up a tank for a friend using this method. If you have an established tank that houses for example, 9 guppies, and you take 1/3 of the mature media to seed a new filter, that new filter will immediately be able to house 3 guppies (9 guppies x 1/3). Note that you could not fully stock the tank at this point (unless full stock is equivalent to 3 guppies). If you require to fully stock the tank here, the fishless cycling method above must be undertaken. The mature tank will obviously then be short of bacteria to cope with its bio-load, but as these bacteria will double in around 24hrs, a small spike may occur but will be dealt with by the filter reasonably quickly. In this case, both tanks should be monitored closely for ammonia and nitrite spikes for several days after the transition. If any spikes do occur, counter with large water changes as usual. Often no spikes will be detectable and the transition apparently seemless.
Another method is to set up the new tank with filter and start it running, then take some established media from the other filter and squeeze it into the new filter but not actually moving the media across, effectively squeezing bacteria out of the old media and into the new filter. Although this method can work, it seems to be very unreliable to me and i don't see any benefit of of using this method over just plain moving some established media across to the new filter.
The last method i will discuss here is to run the new filter alongside the old filter on an established tank in order to colonise the new filter with the appropriate bacteria. Again, this method works, but it is taking say, 4 weeks to accomplish what moving some media across would achieve immediately.
The last two methods i describe can be useful if the 2 filters have incompatible media so it is not possible to just move some media over.
Cloning a replacement filter
Again there are several ways to do this, but only one which really need be considered. Take all the media out of the old filter and put it in the new filter. At the same time, move all the fish to the new tank. Simple!! Obviously this wouldn't work if the old tank is to be kept running. This is why it is important to distinguish.
Hope this helps someone and may i re-iterate that each set of circumstances is different and if you are going to clone a filter and you're not sure what you're doing, i'd ask on here for advice specific to your set-up.
Cheers
BTT
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