6 replies to this topic

[madjak]

Hi all,

whats the quickest way to prime a tank so it's got all good bacteria and no bad bacteria, or whatever you need in the water to sustain fishies.

What I've been doing is getting a dry sponge powerhead filter, get all the gunk out of a running tank and squeeze it into the new filter. Then I just chuck that in a new tank and let it run for a week before I add fish. I'm not sure how well this works, since the last time I did it, all the fish looked very sick for a few weeks before they perked up.

Will adding plants help the proccess? What about if I went to the LFS and grabbed 10 or so mollies. I've heard you need to have some load in the water to get the bacteria to grow?

Anyways, thanks in advance!
Rick

[shaperau]

I dont really think putting gunk from an old tank into a new tank is all that good...
you can do a fishless cycle or cycle with fish.
i have never done a fishless cycle but i think there is some info at:
faq.thekrib.com/begin.html

plants wont really help the cycling process, they will probably slow it down a bit as they are competition for the nitrifying bacteria
you cant really rush cycling a tank too much. if you have to put a load in a new tank straight away, it is fine but just make sure you are continually monitoring ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, and do a big water change when these start to spike. this will slow down the cycling process significantly though, so it will take longer to get a good stable system going. also, you could miss when a spike hits and kill/injure your fish.
The way I do it is to take an established filter from another tank and put it in the new tank, with a small load only. you could run a basic sponge filter in an established tank for a couple of weeks before you start your tank, then put it in, or if you are using something like the aquaclear hang on filters you could just take a sponge from the established and put it in the new.
this will probably (or almost certainly) cause a minor spike in the established tank so be careful not to take too much filter material out of the established tank.
another option is to put some gravel from established tank into a stocking, and hang that in front of a powerhead in the new tank (but you must also have a small fish load in the new tank because you need their poop). this will speed up the process slightly.
cycling can take up to a month, and there really is no way to rush it without hurting either the new tank or the established tank. remember that your established tank has population of required bacteria, and if you hurt that population by removing some of it, other bacteria will take over.
read the website i posted above, and remember there is no need to rush it, but if you do rush, do water changes (probably close to 50% every couple of days depending on the spiking). if it starts off slow and gradual it will be a more stable environment for your fish (and please dont put a huge load of "expendable" fish in there, it really isnt good for the fish which are still living things no matter how cheap they are, and the poor conditions could cultivate disease and such in the tank)
hope this helps a bit, the website is better though

[ikan]

the krib have a good article on tank cycling. One of the suggestion is to run your filter in an established tank for at least a week then move it to the new tank. You can also move some gravels, drift wood, plant etc and some water from established tank. It does make sense.

[madjak]

I read most of the Krib and found it pretty informative. Very helpfull and now I understand the concept of whats going on in my tanks.

It said somewhere in there that you can put some gravel in a stocking or something that will alow water to flow through it and hang it infront of the water stream, and that will jumpstart the bacteria growth. Makes sense really.

I'm still unsure what the best way to do fry tanks is. Keeping all the filters running in an empty tank won't work. So maybe in each of my larger tanks, I need a running sponge filter which I can grab at any time. However, this will cause small repocusions in the tanks I grab them from.

What I really need is an empty tank with amonium injection that can keep the bacteria going.

thanks for everyones help!
Rick

[shaperau]

it really depends on how long you intend to keep the fry in fry tanks...
i have always kept a sponge filter in one of my main tanks, then when i need it pull it out and put in the fry tank. whether this will actually work for bacterial filtration or not is debateable (bacteria will grow in the most ideal situation in the tank, and they will only grow until there are no long nutrients to support them, so there is a limited number that are in the tank which is changing all the time with water conditions etc, if i have a lot of filtration it is more likely the bacteria will grow on the filter media and glass/gravel/rocks in the flow of the main filter) the reason i do it is so the fry can nibble at it and find some food. Due to the ever increasing size of fry and different fish loads in the fry tank etc, it is difficult to get good filtration going, so it is really more important you are doing decent water changes instead, and the water changes will basically become your filtration or way of removing nitrates from the tank.

[madjak]

well one of my concerns was that you get a filter to have all the nice bacteria growing in it... you chuck it in a fry tank and becuase the fry as so small the amout of amonia in the tank would be very low and basically all the bacteria would die anyway. I suspose water changes every few days would be sufficient for small fry and once they get bigger and are eating flake foods, put them in an established tank to grow.

This lot of fry I have going now aren't letting the food hit the bottom of the tank, or they scoot around the bottom eating the left overs. I've changed the water a few times and for some reason... this lot of fry are sticking in a school rather than spreading out so it's making it alot easier to clean the bottom.

so a bit of practice on my part is all thats needed, I think.

thanks again for your help
Rick