pre-cyled sponge filter

stupid question that i think i already know the answer to (i'm remembering that quote from southpark... "there are no stupid questions, only stupid people"), but if i mature a sponge filter in a well established tank for 3-4 weeks and then place it into a tank i've just planted up and filled, could i then add fish/inverts a day or two later?

John hit the nail on the head..... there's more to it than just the filter and untill the water matures the params will be up and down. Alot of caution needs to be taken and make sure ye have q good testkit if you do it.
I've done it myself a number of times but I only put a max of 6 small juvies in at the start because important factors are the amount of water and the bioload it will be up against.
Why not use some water from the cycled tank also?

The bottom line to this is that is more to fish tank maturity than just the bacteria involved in the usual ammonia to nitrites to nitrates.

Using an existing filter in a new tank, filter squeezings etc are good ways to help seed the tank.....but they are "helps" rather than complete solutions. They are better than nothing, and extremely useful in emergency cases.

I don't actually like the term "Cycled" as not only does not mean anything in science or the real world, but the more it is used in fishkeeping the less and less it starts to mean in fishkeeping, and the less useful it is becoming as a terminology.

ian

thanks guys. i want to leave the water from the large tank out of this one, though i may "seed" the sponge filter. based on what you've told me (and i was figuring myself), i think i'll just cycle (apologies to ian) the tank as i normally would. it's going to be at least 2 months before i can even start to get it running so i'm in no great hurry

LemonJelly wrote:

thanks guys. i want to leave the water from the large tank out of this one, though i may "seed" the sponge filter. based on what you've told me (and i was figuring myself), i think i'll just cycle (apologies to ian) the tank as i normally would. it's going to be at least 2 months before i can even start to get it running so i'm in no great hurry

I've just been through this very recently. I transferred an established filter from my old tank to my new one which was double the volume of the original tank. I then took a bucket of dechorinated water, squeezed all my biological filter from an internal that was in my old tank and pored it into another external canister filter ( have one old established filter running on the tank along with a brand new larger well seeded one). Then took the 180l of tank water from my old tank and added it to the new tank which I had already added another 200l of new dechorinated water brought to temp. Just in case I used a packet of organic aqua starter kit too...transferred in all my fish that day and all has been great...

Hope this helps... Brian.

Will post all the pics step by step in a while...

Cycled is merely a word the less educated can use to communicate a process of achieving a tank of maturity by the steps it has to go through although apart from that it sure is just a useless word. Don't expect everyone to understand it but were more than happy to explain

us irish are well us to making up our own lingo

I've placed the word "Cycled" is a special dictionary right next to the term "Water is Perfect" (even if all the fish are gasping for breath or upside down).

The same dictionary has "Lip Synch-ing" as a new term for Miming (Beyonce....that means you).

Or "Car Customisation" for painting the air-filter box go-faster red.

I was told by someone in a fish shop. If the ammonia reading was in the top half of the card not to worry about it, so I wonder what my perfect water would be like

Sounds like your gettin the swing of it but like us all (as in fishkeepers, singers, car modifiers and just the poor clueless ) we all must start somewhere

If the fish are alive and thriving......the water is good....if not perfect.

But if the water tests say "hot" but the fish say "not".....then believe the fish (they're much better chemists than any human).

Oh I miss not being to customise my car......if the on-board computer sees a screwdriver it closes the car down. Some things change for the worse.

ian

JohnH wrote:

"Oh I miss not being to customise my car......if the on-board computer sees a screwdriver it closes the car down. Some things change for the worse.

ian"

While some things change for the worse you could think about changing your car for the better...

Trouble is with German car manufacturers is that 'they know best'.

John

I don't think I could afford a decent 60s car such as an e-type or ac cobra !!

Although I find the modern German cars (Merc and BMW at least) to be the best at not being as controlling as most other makes. Eevn mine has some nice in-built way to override all the auto stuff (a bit like a good DSLR camera).

Hijack away

Although cars to are just a means of transport to me. I get about as excited about cars as my daughter does when I talk about fish, classic sci-fi novels or my taste in music ie not excited at all

Bmw, as everyone knows, have built the new bini (bmw mini) for some time now and while being a classic mini driver myself have learn't alot about their moto of 'out with the old and in with the new.... they tried a scrappage scheme for minis assuming everyone wanted a new 1 .... the worse thing is they were given the rights to the classic and are slowly trying to die it out!! No offence to any german out there but their mentality hasn't changed since hitler Imho so unless its a classic german car.... well I'd rather a french

Funny I was going to post what was the question again? But John beat me to it.

On the fish chemists I am beginning to know my goldies well enough to trust their judgement regarding water conditions. Hopefully some day I'll know all my fish so well.

Q_Comets wrote:

Funny I was going to post what was the question again? But John beat me to it.

On the fish chemists I am beginning to know my goldies well enough to trust their judgement regarding water conditions. Hopefully some day I'll know all my fish so well.

Getting to know fish behaviour as a sign of something being wrong is a prized possession.
And so often, the first thing to get upon the "car-ramp" is to arrange a good water change on the aquarium.

If you are used to having old 60s gas guzzlers, and the car suddenly chuckles to a halt.....first thing is check you have petrol and not phone up for a computer diagnostics (same thing with modern cars as well really).

In science, we use the term Occams Razor: the most simple explanantion that is a valid explanation is probably the one that is correct in a particular query.
Farting around (a la like some modern car computers, and messing with water chemistry) simply turn an easy explanation into some much more complex.

Talking of maintenance.....I find it so difficult to take modern aquarium heaters apart to sand their thermostat contacts with a match-box when they stop working. Not only can I not get into the heaters very well, these modern safety-match boxes are rubbish.

ian

JohnH wrote:

Ian is so right, and I was having a conversation along these lines with Derek fairly recently - your fish will very quickly tell you (not audibly, of course) when things aren't 'quite right' with the water - after all, they're living and breathing in it!
That doesn't mean that we can all dispense with our testing kits and equipment since when we get to see signs of things 'not quite right' from our fish it might be something we could have seen 'coming' if the water had/has been being checked regularly.

Now Ian can tell us (quite rightly) that the water in our tanks in never 'quite right' and I would be the first to agree with him. But, at the end of the day we strive for the best compromise we can achieve.

John

Overly skittish fish that are normally quite calm?.....go check out ammonia levels (and if even if the test kit say zero, still do a water change as it could be the fish are sensing a rise in ammonia).
Yep...little things like that.

But, compromising is part of nature.

Nature is the king (or queen) of compromising. If nature did not have such comprosises built-in then we would not have a natural world as we know it.

So often nature works on a half-maximum capacity basis for 100% acceptable biological activity.....if nature didn't then the idea of recessive genes would become extinct.

In so many of the cases in nature, having 100% of the maxiumum capacity is actually of no real added benefit to an organism over an organism that has half of that maximum capacity. It is almost like nature introduces a moderation to get more and more individual organisms on an equal playing field (in some sports it is called a handicap).

I won't go into that too much (even though it is one of my favourite fields in biochemistry).

ian

and to think that we got away with push-in cork bungs on our heaters years ago