Cycling overnight

Captain Jim Dandy

I'm told if I use one cup of sand from a cycled tank(per ten gallons) and use one third "dirty water"(from cycled tank) and a little used filter floss, that I can go ahead and trust my new 40 gallon tank will be cycled automatically. Reading the stickies here, that seems to almost be the case. Sticky saying water transferral close to useless. Just check levels on nitrites, ammonia, nitrates after a few days(instead of weeks)? Have three tanks I'd like to get into operation. Would you advise me if this is a gamble, foolish, or worth a shot?

AbbeysDad

Used water is useless. Using bio-seed (substrate and/or filter floss) will boost the process (just like using a good bacteria in a bottle product) but it's not instant pudding and you should still monitor ammonia and nitrites and be prepared to do a water change as/if necessary. Cycling w/o bio-seed is a 4-8 week process. With a bio-seed can be as little as 3 weeks.

Footnote: in theory, if you had enough bio-seed material OR it was a heavily planted tank, and there were few fish, the cycle would be practically instant as there would be enough bacteria present to handle ammonia and nitrite.

Captain Jim Dandy

Abbey'sDad... Thank you, that was my guess, but I needed a bit more sound advice. Thank you for your post. CJD