When I took my 55 down, i took the canister filter down also and put the media from it into the sump of my 220. I filled the tank wiht tap water which has 1.0 ammonia, the next day the ammonia was 0, like i expected the filter media was over a year old.
I left this media in the 220 along with the new media, I set the 55 gallon up and put the canister filter back together with the filter media from the 220. Well I put a fish in the tank on monday and just assumed all was good, well today for no reason I decided to test the water in the 55 and the ammonia was 2.0. I felt like crude I almost killed this poor fish, I have no idea how the media died during the transfer, It must have all died since it was enought to support teh 55 with 8 medium fish, and now it shoot the ammonia to 2 with just one fish.
So lesson never assume your media will survive storage and transfer, the only thing I can figure is I kept the media in the last compartment of the sump after all the other bio media. So I guess the other bio media ate all the food and this one starved. I dumped prime in the tank and took the mech pad out of another tank and placed it in front of the return, will check again tomorrow.
I left this media in the 220 along with the new media, I set the 55 gallon up and put the canister filter back together with the filter media from the 220. Well I put a fish in the tank on monday and just assumed all was good, well today for no reason I decided to test the water in the 55 and the ammonia was 2.0. I felt like crude I almost killed this poor fish, I have no idea how the media died during the transfer, It must have all died since it was enought to support teh 55 with 8 medium fish, and now it shoot the ammonia to 2 with just one fish.
So lesson never assume your media will survive storage and transfer, the only thing I can figure is I kept the media in the last compartment of the sump after all the other bio media. So I guess the other bio media ate all the food and this one starved. I dumped prime in the tank and took the mech pad out of another tank and placed it in front of the return, will check again tomorrow.
