new 30 gallon

[Phoenixphire55]

I just bought a new 30 gallon and a hydor canister filter along with it. Its my first canister filter and I'm pretty impressed. I've started fishless cycling by wringing out the filter sponge from my other tank into the new tank. Now I just let it do its thing and occasionally put fish food in the water as well? I'll be checking for nitrates occasionally. Anything else I should do? Add ammonia?

 

[spilzer]

As it sounds like you're at least somewhat familiar with fishless cycling I won't go into details but to answer your last question:

You'll definitely need a source of ammonia to keep all that good bacteria from your old filter sponge alive. Either adding %100 pure ammonia, make sure there are no additives or surfactants, from a hardware store (ACE Hardware stores usually sell it as Janitorial Strength) or adding one uncooked jumbo shrimp should do the trick. Some people like to put the shrimp in a pair of brand-new never washed nor worn nylon stockings to make cleaning it up easier. The shrimp will slowly decay releasing ammonia into your tank. The ideal concentration for ammonia should be 3-5 ppm to get a healthy culture of bacteria that can support a full bioload.

 

[JustOneMore20]

If you can move a piece of filter media to the new filter and leave it there, that would be best. Then you could add in a few fish to start with and you shouldn't have a normal cycle.

I always run new filters on established tanks, or move a piece or 2 of filter media into the new filter and then start adding fish.

 

[Phoenixphire55]

I had thought of adding media from my HOB into the canister of my new filter, but I don't have any loose filter material in my HOB (just a sponge, activated carbon, and zeolite). I may put a guppy in the tank in a few days and if that helps then cool, if not then its not a big loss (she's the only guppy I have, leftover from when I was using them to feed ACFs). I'll also wring out the HOB filter sponge into the new tank again in a week or so.

 

[spilzer]

I would seriously consider NOT putting in the guppy because even if it's not a big loss to you, it would suck for the guppy. A jumbo shrimp or some pure ammonia would do the trick. Here's more about fishless cycling.

 

[mandown123]

ick.. pure ammonia doesnt sound good (even if I guess its essentially the same thing?) - i would much prefer a natural method like the shrimp.

 

[spilzer]

I used pure ammonia and it worked pretty well if you don't count the user error on my part which meant I ended up having a much higher ppm than needed. It took several PWCs to get it down to a level where I could I see effect my growing bacteria colony had on the levels.

It is a little weird to be dumping pure chemicals into a fish tank but if you make sure it's 100% pure, no additives or anything else, it works the same as fish waste (without the yucky decaying shrimp lying around).