just set up a 150 gal myself with an fx5 and seeded from a HOB filter, I just put the old filter cartridge in the second basket with my biomedia that i'm running in there, tank fully cycled in 16 days. ammonia level went from 8 ppm to 0. speeded everything up great.
Inserting old filter media into new Canister Filter
- Thread starter crazychomp
- Start date
bgcoop8784;3419873; said:
I read a comparison review (on this site) of the FX5 & Eheim Pro3. They put 7ppm of Ammonia into each of 2 100G tanks. They hooked one brand new uncycled canister to each tank & let them run. The Eheim was cycled in like 11 days & the FX5 took 14 days I think. I'm not trying to say one is better than the other, just that 16 days isn't really speed-cycling. I think you may have only experience the "placebo effect".... Using seeded media properly should cycle a tank in half that time.
all i know is 16 days was fast enough to make me happy seeing how i had my 125gal for sale and the guy said he wanted it that day so i had no choice but to move my fish to this tank so cycling with a few of my favorite fish with all new everything was worrying the heck outa me.
JakeH;3420024; said:
I also read that thread and can make a lot of challenges the validity of that particular "comparison"... But since the people who actually performed the comparison were not available for debate or to answer questions... it's just me criticizing it...
But one important fact to keep in mind when considering it...
They only dosed each tank with ammonia once in thevery begining...
During a fishless cycle the tank is dosed daily... in a stocked aquarium the fish produce ammonia constantly...
So just because it processed Xppm of ammonia into nitrates in 11 or 14 days does NOT mean it was fully cycled in such a time period... it just means it got each type of bacteria in 11 or 14 days...
And anyone who really understands cycling will completely understand that the quality of the filter does not have a single thing to do with how fast bacteria is found in the tank...
It's easy to make a useless comparison appear scientific...
Valid point I guess... How long does it take you to cycle a new tank with old media?
Btw, its also easy to make a scientific comparison appear useless...
Btw, its also easy to make a scientific comparison appear useless...
JakeH;3420203; said:
There are far too many variables to give this question a simple answer...
I've set up a brand new tank... added 1/2 sand from a mature tank... added a couple pieces of driftwood or rock out of a mature tank... put a brand new AC 110 and an AC 110 off of a mature tank...
Put a light to moderate stock of fish in the tank... did a 50% water change the following day... by the end of the week the tank had 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and nitrates were slowly rising... the tank never got above 1 ppm of ammonia...
This is actually how I've cycled 90% of the tanks I've started in the last 7 years...
It's all a matter of how much bacteria you get into the new tank... and how large your ammonia source is in the new tank...
JakeH;3420203; said:
Not really... their trick it to talk over the heads of the average hobbyist... and to not be around to answer questions on the comparison...
I speak in pretty plain english about things that most of us shuold easily be able to understand... and I'm here to re-explain things that are not clear and answer any quesitons one may have about my challenges...
Just so everyone knows, i wasn't tryin to say my tank cycled extremely fast or anything, just letting crazychomp know that he could cycle his tank that way and about how long mine took using a very similar method that he was planning on using, good info though.
