Good Bacteria Question

[TW]

Hi All

If you have a fully cycled tank & you add a sponge filter to the sump, so that you can use that sponge filter later in another tank - how long does it take before good bacteria is sufficiently built up on that sponge filter so that you could call it cycled?

[Hollowman]

I would say that if you just throw a sponge in to your sump, it is going to take some weeks to get it to a mature state.
To get it to mature quicker in the same sump, you could run an airstone in the middle of it to draw water through it, like a normal huey hung type. then it will still take a week or 3 :)

[ILLUSN]

i generally use 2 weeks as a minimum, but aim for 1 month.

[TW]

Thanks guys

So, it needs to have an air pump running through it? I also put a bag of media in a stocking & have it hanging down from one corner - so that's not going to work?

[ILLUSN]

that will work fine robyn, most of the time I run a sponge filter in a tank to seed it but i usually have a bag of media in a tank as well just sitting there, the media does pick up enough bacteria to get a new filter going, generally i use about 2L (of aged media) in a 2217 and 4L of new media.

[TW]

Thanks ILLUSN