Aquarium Cycling Issues

[skjl47]

So the question is how long till the sponge and rings have adequate bacteria buildup, where I can move them to the canister filter and its ready to use?

added them to my old established sump

Might take 6 to 8 weeks (probably more like 8), stating from scratch like that

take 6-8 weeks despite placing the new media in a fully cycled functioning sump of my main aquarium?

new media is put in a tank, it must have time to build up a very large population of bacteria from scratch.

Hello; Let add to the confusion by reflecting on what I think the two of you are saying.

First Hidan; I think you may be confusing what we call an "instant cycle" with growing bb on new media.
We can take old bb loaded material from a long running established tank, plop it into a new tank and have plenty of bb ready to deal with ammonia and nitrites. The bb are already populated on the old tank surfaces (media). This is sometimes called an instant cycle and is the way many of us set up new tanks once we get at least one tank established.

What you want to do is get a good population of bb to grow on virgin media. It will happen but takes time. A poor analogy is getting a lawn on bare soil. You can seed the ground with grass seed but it can take weeks to get a lawn started because it takes time. Same sort of thing with putting virgin media into an established sump. It will happen but takes a few weeks.

I started putting sponge bases in the spaces of my tank filters a few years ago. I leave them there all the time in case I need to set up a new tank in a hurry.

 

[duanes]

The above comment by Jeff, is what I meant.
The beneficial bacteria in tanks that utilize ammonia and nitrite, are "not" planktonic, when doing their job they are not floating around in the water.
They don't start to work until they become sessile (meaning attached to a surface), just as putting old water in a new tank, does not start a cycle. Only by adding pieces of something with biofilm covering the surface, can you instantly start a cycle.

 

[Hidan]

Thanks for the clarification guys.

Makes sense. I just assumed it would be a bit faster than starting a cycle from scratch as the BB are already present in decent numbers in the sump.
Though it makes sense that it would still take time to grow to numbers large enough to sustain a new tank (your seeding the lawn analogy was perfect).