How long to leave sponge in main tank?

[jameson_uk]

I have a 22l 30cm cube that will become a betta tank. That tank will be planted (but probably plants like Java fern and Anubias) which I guess would provide a fair bit of biological filtration anyway for a single fish?

I have a sponge filter I plan to use and figured I could just run this in my main tank for a while but how long would I need to run it for before it would have enough bacteria to for a betta?

 

[AverageWhiteBloke]

I think bacteria colonies change depending on the environment they are living in. Would happen quite quick I reckon, even just running it for 24hrs in the main tank, seeding the new tank with some old water and some will come in on the plants. Probably will still have to go through the process of maturing the new tank until sufficient bacteria had developed on the new hard scape etc but doing all of the above will definitely speed up the process from starting everything raw.

 

[abutterell]

Interested in this as I've just added a sponge filter to my main tank for use in a quarantine tank and am wondering the same thing.

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[Aqua360]

2 weeks is a safe standard I live by on my tanks