New tank, old filter.

[Clammie]

Hi there, first post on the forum!

Just a quick question, I remember somebody telling me that I wouldn't be able to use mature media from my turtle tank to use in my new tank because of a disease he'd read about.

Basically, I'm getting rid of the turtles and moving my Eheim 2217 into my new 110 gallon tank.
Is it safe to use the media from the turtle tank (It's already well cycled)?
Or would you recommend staring over? I have a bottle of ammonia on order and I'm ready to start a fishless cycle, but obviously I can't wait to get this tank set up as soon as possible!

 

[davidtcb1]

If it were me, I would probably discard the old media and start again after giving the tank a good cleaning. I don't know that much about turtles, but I'd rather not risk several weeks of some sort of disease you know nothing about than a couple weeks of re-cycling.

 

[clownie33]

START OVER AND CYLCLE THE TANK FOR A FEW DAYS BECAUSE REPTILE CARRY MANY DISEASES AND THE LAST THING YOU WANT TO DO IS SET UP A NEW TANK BUY FISH AND HAVE THEM ALL GET SICK AND DIE SO START OVER

 

[Toby_H]

Turtles have a disease that kills fish? I've never heard that...

Fish and tirtles very commonly occupy the same waters in nature, plus I've seen turtles and fish in the same set ups countless times.

I'm sure there are diseases that a turtle could have that would also affect fish, but I see no reason to randomly assume your turtles have fish killing diseases, provided they are showing no signs if illness.


Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to use the old filter/media on the new fish tank...

 

[EvilKid]

i would use the same media just give it a rinse in warm/hot water and start your fishless cylcle ASAP if you worried about disease just let it dry overnight most bacteria wont survive after hot water rinse and should deffenetley not survive if you dry out the media over night its the safest way to go

 

[Clammie]

Thanks for the replies!
I think I'll do it the safe way and just discard the filter media.

I have a 15kg bag of Al***rog sitting around anyway.
That was the other thing I wanted to ask actually. Anyone who's used Al***rog or knows anything about it, would it be okay to use in my filter instead of going out and buying EhfiSubstrat Pro?
It'd be set up like this (First in water path --> last in water path)
Ehfimech
Coarse blue sponge
Al***rog
EhfiSynth or some other type of mechanical filter floss.
So basically Eheim's recommendations, but in place of the EhfiSubstra Pro I'd be using the Al***rog.

And for anybody who doesn't know what Al***rog is, but would like to help me out.

That's it, but it's actually a lot more porous than it looks on the picture.

 

[Clammie]

Haha, didn't realise the forum stared *** words.

Alphagrog then.

 

[clownie33]

Turtles have a disease that kills fish? I've never heard that...

Fish and tirtles very commonly occupy the same waters in nature, plus I've seen turtles and fish in the same set ups countless times.

I'm sure there are diseases that a turtle could have that would also affect fish, but I see no reason to randomly assume your turtles have fish killing diseases, provided they are showing no signs if illness.


Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to use the old filter/media on the new fish tank...

what i meant was some turtles being reptiles can carry disease that can potentially harm your fish

 

[hybridtheoryd16]

Even if there is some super duper turtle disease that would kill your fish,

Since you are doing a fishless cycle there will not be any fish going in the tank for a couple of weeks anyway.

And there is no fungus or parasite that can live that long with out a host to feed off of.

The media is safe to use.