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Switching Tanks - Keeping Filter Alive

Coys

Member
Joined
28 Oct 2015
Messages
160
Location
Basildon, Essex, UK
My son is upgrading his aquarium; he has found a new home for the fish and has already stripped the old one down (it somehow ended up in my garage) and I suggested he keep the (external) filter media alive by running the filter through a (heated) bucket of the old aqaurium water for the two weeks it will take us to set up the new one. Will that work? Do we need to feed the media with, say, a few flakes of fish food?
 
Hi
It will be no issue keeping it for few weeks hooked to a bucket just make sure the hoses a secure in place as this is main hasard
I imagine that there is some mulm in filter so additional feeding may not be necessary
Regards Konsa
 
Thanks Konsa.
The filter hasn't been cleaned for a few months so I imagine there's some gunk in there to keep it going for another week.
Steve.
 
The filter hasn't been cleaned for a few months so I imagine there's some gunk in there to keep it going for another week.

Word to the wise mate, having a mature filter running in a new setup will definitely speed up the process of maturing the tank but I would say in a new tank a lot of the "friendly" bacteria reside on the surfaces of hardscape, gravel and plant leaves so when setting up the new tank I would still give it some time to get through the cycle and not set up with a mature filter and add fish straight away.
 
Word to the wise mate, having a mature filter running in a new setup will definitely speed up the process of maturing the tank but I would say in a new tank a lot of the "friendly" bacteria reside on the surfaces of hardscape, gravel and plant leaves so when setting up the new tank I would still give it some time to get through the cycle and not set up with a mature filter and add fish straight away.

I am pretty sure that most of the beneficial bacteria live in the filter media, so I'm not conviced that there is enough bacteria in the gravel or on the plants to make much difference.
 
Hi
AverageWhiteBloke just suggested U not to rush with stocking and is right about the bacteria colonising all surfaces arround the tank.In planted tanks most of the water filtration(purification ) is carried by the healthy and actively growing plants as they uptake any source of Nitrogen(Ammonia, NO2,NO3) with the ammonia being the preferred one.
I will too advice to give it few weeks before putting any livestock in.
Regards Konsa
 
Hi
AverageWhiteBloke just suggested U not to rush with stocking and is right about the bacteria colonising all surfaces arround the tank.In planted tanks most of the water filtration(purification ) is carried by the healthy and actively growing plants as they uptake any source of Nitrogen(Ammonia, NO2,NO3) with the ammonia being the preferred one.
I will too advice to give it few weeks before putting any livestock in.
Regards Konsa
I'm currently cycling a low tech tank using an already matured sponge filter, some old fish tank water, tetra cycle and quite densely planted and I'm still getting fairly high nitrite readings 15days in and that's without any fish.

Sent from my STH100-2 using Tapatalk
 
Hi all,
I am pretty sure that most of the beneficial bacteria live in the filter media, so I'm not conviced that there is enough bacteria in the gravel or on the plants to make much difference.
It depends a bit on the set-up, but my suspicion would be that in a planted tank, with a substrate, a lot of the nitrification occurs in the upper layers of the substrate and in the root rhizosphere.

I also think it will be different for every-tank, dependent upon the substrate, the filter media and the degree of oxygenation. In some ways it is just a numbers game, you are going to have a larger oxygenated volume of substrate and surfaces.

I stripped the tank down that has been set up in my <"kitchen for the last 10 years">. The substrate was 80% fine play-sand, and it has always been fairly heavily planted, substrate depth varied, but was always at least 4 cm (and often deeper). It has always had MTS snails present. There was a layer of fine roots at surface level, running through a mulm layer, and the large Echinodorus had rooted across the whole tank, but I expected that there would be layers where there was evidence of anoxic or anaerobic conditions, but there weren't any discoloured layers, and no smell of decay of any kind.

cheers Darrel
 
So, does this mean I've been getting lucky for 'years'... when quickly setting up a new tank, I've always just set up an Eheim Liberty filter, using some media from another running tank, about 20L of water from any of the running tanks, and I guess this is the main thing that's got my through unscathed, used another tanks sponge filter in the new tank then moving whatever into it. Nothing has died yet, test have always been good. I wonder which of these is the biggest contributing fact of the quick cycle; might do a test.
 
Hi all,
I've always just set up an Eheim Liberty filter, using some media from another running tank,.......... used another tanks sponge filter in the new tank then moving whatever into it
I think some of it is to do with the filter. A HOB filter typically has plenty of oxygen getting to the filter media, and oxygen is the prime metric in biological filtration.

Because your filter media has established in another tank, it will already have a <"complex microbial assemblage"> that will respond to changes in nutrient (including ammonia) levels. Over time those microbes will spread around the tank and colonise surfaces (probably mainly zones in the rhizosphere and upper layers of the sediment) that are suitable for them.

cheers Darrel
 
Set up the new aquarium this morning. Filled with RO water, cleaned filter, including replacing white and blue filters.

Filter has been running for about four hours and the water is very milky, presumably due to micro bubbles. I've never seen this when cleaning my own Eheim cannister filter. Any idea what could be causing this? Maybe air trapped in new gravel?
 
Not really cold, no. I heated it up over night and then drove it up to his place this moring, but I reckon it was down to about 10-15C by the time we'd got it in.
 
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