Question About Cycling With Borrowed Filter Media...

[Gimpdiggity]

Hi everyone.

I've been trying to get my 20 long started on it's cycle...with the Tetra Safestart I had no luck...but it was bought from a department store, so it's entirely possible it wasn't handled very well.

Anyway, I ended up going to a well received pet store and buying a sponge filter that had been used in one of their established and well maintained aquariums. They sold me the "used" filter for the same price as a new one...they just put the new one in the aquarium so that it could start getting itself covered in bacteria.

So, I'm running a canister filter on this tank...a Penn-Plax Cascade 500. I would, in the end, prefer to have JUST the Penn-Plax running in the tank, as the sponge in this tank is large and I find it to be pretty unsightly.

So, my question is this...after the cycle is fully established in the tank, would it be safe to remove the sponge filter so that I am only running the canister?? Or would I be better off just leaving the sponge in the tank permanently?

Thanks.

 

[LSuzuki]

Yes, you will eventually be able to remove the sponge. It will take longer for the beneficial bacteria to establish themselves in Cascade 500, because the bacteria in the sponge will be eating most of the ammonia and nitrite, but they will get established eventually.

Don't "trust" the sponge - it may not have enough of the right kind of bacteria to handle the axolotl tank immediately, or it may not have been in the pet store tank long enough. So keep a close eye on ammonia etc.

When you do take the sponge out, it may take the Cascade a few days to pick up the slack, so you will need to pay extra close attention to the ammonia and nitrites then.

If you want a faster (and surer) cycle for the cascade, and have room for a another tank, you could do 'fishless cycling' with the cascade in another tank while the sponge is keeping your axolotl tank safe.

 

[Gimpdiggity]

Yes, you will eventually be able to remove the sponge. It will take longer for the beneficial bacteria to establish themselves in Cascade 500, because the bacteria in the sponge will be eating most of the ammonia and nitrite, but they will get established eventually.

Don't "trust" the sponge - it may not have enough of the right kind of bacteria to handle the axolotl tank immediately, or it may not have been in the pet store tank long enough. So keep a close eye on ammonia etc.

When you do take the sponge out, it may take the Cascade a few days to pick up the slack, so you will need to pay extra close attention to the ammonia and nitrites then.

If you want a faster (and surer) cycle for the cascade, and have room for a another tank, you could do 'fishless cycling' with the cascade in another tank while the sponge is keeping your axolotl tank safe.

Thank you.

I forgot to mention...this 20 long IS in a fishless cycle. My Lotl is in a 10 gallon that won't cycle for the life of it, so it gets a water change every two days with ammonia test done right before the change...and the water added is treated with Prime.

I've tried running the Safestart in this 20 long with no luck at all...ammonia is still where it was at when I added it pure from the bottle I got from Amazon, so it's clearly not even started to cycle. No nitrites, either.

The sponge, I'm pretty sure, was in the tank for a while. It was, in a word, disgusting. When I put it in, the ENTIRE TANK filled with debris, and it took the Cascade about an hour to get it back to normal. I actually found out that this store does this on the State of Michigan's government website. Apparently Michigan has a program for schools called "Salmon in the Classroom" where students raise salmon from eggs to release in a watershed that leads to one of the Great Lakes. The pet store I got the used filter from is the one recommended by the State of Michigan for teachers to get established filter material from. Pretty cool, and I feel that there's a good chance that the filter was legitimately established. I walked around with the guy while he checked about 20 different filters before finally giving me the one that I got...he said he wanted to make sure I got the best one they had right then. Good stuff.

 

[Gimpdiggity]

I have nitrates!!!!!!

The ammonia level was down significantly from where it tested yesterday, and just two days ago I had zero nitrites and zero nitrates. Today I'm still showing zero nitrites, but I'm between 5-10ppm nitrates.

I've been doing a lot of reading on why I might not have gotten a reading for nitrites, and I found it's fairly common for this to happen when using established media.

So it seems I'm on the right path!! I added a bit more ammonia because it dropped from roughly 2.0ppm to .5-1.0ppm. I didn't want to run the risk of starving the bacteria over the next 24 hours.