Speed Cycle for a 240 gal?

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STONEDFISH

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jul 19, 2005
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..in an octopus' garden in the shade:)
I just bought a 240 long. I will be filtering it with a Fluval FX5 and two emperor 400's for now, might add another canister. I will be stocking it with fish from established tanks I have.
My Aro-Tub has a MAG 350 on it that has been running awhile, if I put that on the 240 will that establish the other filters quickly? Since my arowana is already in the tank with the 350.....wouldn't that help him acclimate to his new home?
Is that cycle stuff worth a crap? What else should I do?
I've been wanting this tank for so long!! IMPATIENT!!
stndfsh
 
Patients, or you could loose your fish!

No, putting an established filter in a new tank will not help the other get established.

Use water from your other tank in the new one, it will have the nutrients that the new filters will need to start with.

Take some of the media from thew Mag 350 and squeeze it into the other filters while their off, then add bottled bacteria (Bio-spira if you have a trusted LFS), let it set for 15 minutes, then start it up.

I do fishless cycles myself so I use pure ammonia for the cycling.

Cycling can take up to 8 weeks :WHOA:. But the above should speed that up a lot.

Dr Joe

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So what you are saying is that the tank itself needs to cycle not just the filters? So if you put established filters onto a new tank it won't be automatically cycled? I thought it would be kinda like a huge water change....if you conditioned the water properly your filters would be golden.

The two 400's and the FX5 will be here tomorrow, but the tank won't be here until October 6 when glasscages comes to Atlanta. If I put the filters on my tanks that are up and running, that'll get me a head start, right?
stndfsh
 
what you can also do in the mean time is to put as much as foam block in your tank. Let it build BB as much as possible to when you get your new tank full of water, dump everything in and you should be able to speed up the cycling process.

The water does not necesarily hold the BB, BB tends to sticks into filter catridge, decoration, driftwoof, gravel, heater and etc else...

Once you have everything in the tank, you may want to put some ammonia to feed the BB. If you put a BB inside a fallow tank, your BB will die off because of starvation. If you have quite a bit of BB in your tank and when you add ammonia, your cycling process will begin and you should be able to see nitrite within a few days.

I started cycling my 240 on sunday. I dumped all my filter, heater, bio balls, plants, sand from the 75 gallon and I started adding ammonia on sunday, by tuesday, my nitrite had creeped to .50 ppm.

I am guessing by this coming sunday, nitrite will soon die off and nitrate start forming.

I am adding 5 ml of ammonia per day until tuesday and dosed it down to 2-3 ml last night
 
I just cycled my 125 almost instantly. It took about 2 days or so. I just added cycled biomax into the Eheim running and left the Emp with brand new stuff. I added 180 gallons worth of Bio-Spira and then my fish and no problems what so ever. The readings for first day: .25ppm ammonia I forget the nitrite but nitrate was 5ppm. Second day .25ppm ammonia and 10 nitrates. 3rd day 0ppm ammonia and 5 ppm nitrates after a small water change and they haven't changed one bit for a week and a half.
 
Putting an established filter into your new tank wont instantly cycle it, but it will make it safe for a small amount of fish right away. How many?. Depends on the size of the filter / tank / fish. The idea is that you will have some biological filtering working immediatly. Then your main new filters will catch up over the next few weeks and you can increase the fish population. The established filter wont really help cycle the new ones, but it will keep your fish alive while they do cycle.

For example. If you had a 50gal tank/ filter / fish you could move the whole lot to a 250gal tank. The 250 gal wouldn't be instantly cycled, but it would have enough filtration to support the 50gal worth of fish. Over time the new filters would establish and you can increase the fish numbers.

So yes.. if your filter is supporting the Aro in the small tank, it should still support it in the big tank. Then over time your new filters will cycle and you can take it out.

But like the others have said... take it slow. I would leave the filter in there for maybe a month and not add any more fish in that time either.

Cheers

Ian
 
STONEDFISH;1141104; said:
...The two 400's and the FX5 will be here tomorrow, but the tank won't be here until October 6 ...
Click to expand...

You cycle filters, not tanks. Saying that you cycled your tank really means the tank system as a whole (which just happens to include the filter). Start your filters now between all of your tanks using Dr. Joe's method and they will be ready when the tank arrives. You can add all four pads from the 400 to a single unit if you don't want to run both of them. (Put the bio-wheels in the tank to give them a head start.)
 
I'll be running a similar system on my 240 but it will have 4 E400's with supercartrages (lots of extra bio-capacity) along with the FX5 and a pair of stacked Hydro5's. I have a LOT of E400's and 280s that can contribute one bio-wheel each to the new tank and speed up the process along with seasoned hydro 5 sponges. bio-spira will also shorten the cycle but your still looking at a minimum of 3 weeks before its safe for a few fish and 3 more before it's completely stable. Never forget that even though a tanks cycled to ONE level...that level changes with the number and size of the fish. Rapid changes...either up OR down can crash the system with rather nasty results.
 
old media and bio spira
 
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