How about if I add cycled aquarium water to a cycling aquarium?

[surfaday]

I'm a frequent lurker here, thanks for all the help along the way. I haven't found any info on this:

I'm just sitting here impatient about my fishless cycle. I've been adding 1/3 cap of Stability daily and a small pinch of fish food every other day or so to my new 10 gallon freshwater for 5 days and the parameters are:

Ammonia .25, Nitrite 0.0, Nitrate 0.0.

The bottle of Stability says you can add fish right away, but that makes me a little nervous with the .25 ammonia and no nitrate in there.

So, seems to me like no cycle at all yet, right? I thought Stability was supposed to speed that up?

For comparison, my cycled 20 gallon fresh community tank: Ammonia 0.0, Nitrite 0.0, Nitrate 10.

Tomorrow is water change day. Would it help to take 5 gals of gravel vacuuming murk from the cycled tank and use that to do a 50% water change in the 10 gallon?

With the 20 gallon, it was my first in many years and I was ignorant of cycling and stuff. Now, armed with the internet, and with albeit little knowledge and a test kit, I'm reluctant to put fish in because I really don't want to torture them.

Or is .25 not enough to worry about? I am under the impression that ammonia should be 0, and if its not cycled, I could get a spike?

Thanks for the help!

Walter

 

[dalto]

Your tank is not cycled. If it was nitrate would be increasing.

Your first issue is that fish food is not a great ammonia source. A better ammonia source would be.....ammonia.

Next, adding water from your other tank won't help but adding some of your filter material would. I would not do this until you have a better ammonia source.

 

[surfaday]

Ok, sounds good - ammonia - I just re-read the cycling article pinned here too.

But the murky stuff I vacuum out of the gravel? I thought if I used that for a water change the bacteria from the gravel would get sucked into the HOB filter media, no?

No experience, just wondering.

Will get some pure ammonia tomorrow.

 

[dalto]

It is possible that it would work.

However, how much bacteria is actually in the gravel will vary between tanks. While filter material will almost always have a high concentration of bacteria. On top of that you won't be pulling all the crud out of your gravel into your new tank.

 

[aqua_holic]

I have seen accounts of using mulm (crap from the substrate or filter media) to start a new tank working. I've never attempted to cycle a tank in this manner because I simply stuff media from another tank into the new tanks filter. That's the best way to cycle a tank.

There is very little bacteria free floating in the water. Any that's there are just using it for transportation.

 

[Fresh2o]

The stuff you are pulling out of the gravel might be the fish food that you have been adding. It's best to put that and anything else (like a raw shrimp from the grocery store) in a filter media mesh bag or hosiery. Makes for easier cleanup.
But I would go for the pure ammonia. No dyes, perfumes, or surfactants. You can control the amount needed to get to your target point (2 ppm, 3 ppm, 4 ppm).
Starting from scratch may take a while (~4 weeks). As mentioned previously, obtaining seeded media from an existing, healthy tank would really speed things up.


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[surfaday]

Thanks for the advice, sounds like I should skip the water swap idea.

I was thinking last night that another thing I couId do is put an AC50 on that 10 gal, do you think that would be too much? I'm thinking AC50 because 1) it is on sale at petsmart for less than an AC30, and 2) it would match one of the filters on my 20g, the other being a C4. That way I can put the cycled AC50 on the uncycle 10g. I don't care for the API Superclear on there right now anyway.

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[aqua_holic]

I have an ac50 on my 10. You can restrict the flow if needed. I would definitely go that route rather than pay more for the 30.

 

[trennamw]

If it's the same AC 50 that I have, it has a switch to slow it down for feedings. As someone said you could just leave it on that all the time.

I'll agree with what everyone had advised so far. If you pull a little media from your established tank's filter, even if it doesn't fit perfectly (right now you just want it to be "contagious" to the other media) ... Then use a true ammonia source ... Shouldn't take long.

I'd ditch the stability. Those things rarely help very much.

You've probably read that Ace janitorial ammonia is reliable. High strength no additives. You'd get about 4ppm using 1ml. Fish stores often have graduated pipettes that show 1 ml.

For now you could run the AC 50 on high with a low water level to seriously aerate the water, and add some baking soda to raise the pH. The bacteria like higher pH and you'll lower it at your final water change (if it doesn't drop on its own).

The fish food you've added provides some phosphate, which helps the cycle.

When I cycled with phosphate, high pH, high temp (80), lots of oxygen, and donated media it took about a week to see high nitrates and low ammonia.


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[dalto]

Once you get your ammonia I would strongly suggest dosing to 2ppm instead of 4ppm.

Dosing to 2ppm will cycle the tank just as fast but the chance of having the cycle stall is much lower. When dosing to 4ppm there is much greater chance of having huge nitrite spikes or all your KH consumed during the cycle which can cause pH crashes.

 

[trennamw]

+1 on going to 2ppm. I did 4 and among other things it just made the tests really hard to read.

The difference is just the quantity of bacteria you're aiming for. I wanted to be super conservative and build up a colony that could process a huge ammonia load. But realistically, I only stocked 25% of the tank at first so 2ppm was probably more than enough and would have gone more quickly.


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