In three words: no, absolutely not.

 

Do they use the same filter? Can you just trade a fraction of your foam? I'm not saying it would auto-cycle their tank, but you would be gifting some healthy bacteria.

 

Better use of mulm water is to poor it into gravel bed when you start filling tank up so it seeds into gravel bed. Way more surface area for bacteria to populate. Gravel bed is always biggest and best biological filter.

If tanks already filled get a ketchup squeeze bottle and go around and squirt a little bit of mulm water into substrate about every 2”. Dump rest into tank and let filter pads pick it up.

It can very much speed up cycling nicely but go easy with mulm and it’s not a full on instant cycling no matter what someone on internet said.

 

Short answer, no.
However.... If you were to put 'items' in your tank or filter for a week - or three, then gift him that- he would get an extra boost. I do it all the time when I get new tanks- generally bacteria sticks to 'stuffs' (I call it when im being coy). But here is my routine: I use some rocks, substrate and filter media from an established tank in the new tank. I fill and add liquid ammonia for a week or so.... no water changes, lights off.
After that I check and if things are going in the right direction, then I add 'liquid beneficial bacteria'... people can argue whether or not this helps- but personally i figure it cant hurt. I keep dosing until my ammonia dosing reads 0, 12 hours after dosing and my nitrates are high.

 

Bacteria will only grow to the level where the bacteria colony has enough food to live. One can not create more bacteria if there is no food for them to ingest. Bacteria inside the aquarium will consume the vast majority of the waste that feeding and fish waste provides.

Bump: Bacteria will only grow to the level where the bacteria colony has enough food to live. One can not create more bacteria if there is no food for them to ingest. Bacteria inside the aquarium will consume the vast majority of the waste that feeding and fish waste provides.

 

It's interesting that folks that agree that putting media from an established tank/filter in a new filter jump starts a cycle, but not that 'cleaning' those same sponges in the the new tank water won't!
I 'instant cycle' new tank/filters (even in bare bottom grow out tanks) by doing exactly that - I simply take one or more sponges from a healthy tank/filter and 'clean' it in the new tank water. This seeds the new filter with BB. I first learned of this some 20 years ago!
The Bailey Brothers speak of it in one of their podcasts back in early 2k.
The Bailey Brothers Pet Fish Talk

Aquarium Water : 8:40

 

Seeding adds all the BB strains and also provides a modest amount of organic waste for them to use as food source short term. But you still need to provide a long term food source by feeding fish or ammonia dosing to keep them fed if you want them to fully populate bio media.

 

You can only rush nature so much. Squeezing a sponge from a large Aqua Clear that has been running on a healthy mature tank is certainly going to help things along -and I do every time I set up a new aquarium. I'd imagine countless millions of nitrifying bacteria are going to be in that rinse water. Any plant that is growing will remove nitrogen as well. But I don't know of a method that doesn't take some time. Surely many of those bacteria perish from the parameter changes and disturbance, and there's just a "settling in" period for lack of a better term before they reach peak effectiveness.

Ever found a small fish that has been dead for a day or more in a newer tank? They almost always have cottony fuzz covering them. The same dead fish in a thriving 4 year old planted tank will dissolve into nothing in that time. When I was into reef aquariums, ORP (oxidation reduction potential) was becoming all the rage. This is basically your water's ability to oxidize a contaminant. I suspect you would find similar varying ORP readings in a mature planted system compared to a newer one as well though I don't know of people concerning themselves with this value in freshwater. But make no mistake, you can get an aquarium "cycled" in a few weeks (meaning no NH4 or NO2 and NO3 is showing), especially with growing plants but this same tank is not nearly the stable ecosystem that it will become after several months or even years.

 

How fast will the BB reproduce?

If seeding a new tank and providing a small bioload right off the bat it should stabilize very quickly. The key to doing what abbysdad talks about is not dumping an entire host of inhabitants in the tank right away.

 

Yes - I think the key point here is that there is always a possibility that a seeded tank could fail to cycle. Even if you move a mature filter/substrate/plants/decorations in from an established tank. I often set up multiple seeded tanks at a time and several times, I've had two tanks set up exactly the same way, at exactly the same time, and one cycles almost immediately while the other goes through an adjustment period with some ammonia or nitrite spikes where you can actually smell that the water is "off".

It's like any situation where you're taking a "sterile" environment and trying to get specific bacteria to colonize. Take a human body after a course of antibiotics as an equivalent example. Many people have issues with yeast or overgrowth of bad bacteria in their bodies after a course of antibiotics knocks out their natural gut flora. Sometimes this requires additional treatment with antifungals or even stronger things. This can happen even if you take all precautions like taking probiotics.

This just isn't a guaranteed, 100% foolproof process. In identical setups you could have some tanks cycle right away and some tanks fail to seed. Taking time to make sure a new tank has stabilized prevents bad things from happening to livestock. It's also important to be aware of the tolerance and hardiness of your livestock. I often add a snail or two first to a new tank that appears to have stabilized. If the snail is fine, after a few days I add a guppy. If the guppy is fine after a few days, I add a shrimp. Basically I take the hardiest creature that I wouldn't mind losing one of to be the canary in the coal mine. If the snail, guppy and shrimp are all fine and water parameters continue to test where they should after a week, I then slowly add in more sensitive critters over time to allow the nitrifying bacteria to catch up to the increased waste production. If at any point things start to go downhill I remove the critters back to an established tank and treat the tank like it's brand new and wasn't seeded - I go through a fishless cycle at that point. I no longer experience deaths due to new tank syndrome, or "unexplained" deaths that are likely due to unstable water parameters.

I made enough mistakes with adding livestock to new tanks that hadn't cycled when I first started out with aquariums and lost enough poor fish that I don't find it worth the risk and stress to push things too much and rush. E.g. I am picking up some shell dweller cichlids this weekend even though their designated tank isn't ready so they're going in a long-established 10 gallon or two temporarily. Would I rather put them in their permanent tank right away? Of course, but that's not going to be good for them and I would feel like I'm failing in my duty to use good animal husbandry practices. Ideally I'd just wait to pick them up until their permanent tank has cycled but that's not an option this time around. So the 10 gallon(s) will keep them safe and happy in the meantime

 

Although I know it could be done and has been done over and over I never understood the need to "rush" a cycle and put fish in.

For the last 10 years or so, I plant the tank, let them get settled, move things around to my likening and do a larger weekly water change. Usually around 4 weeks I slowly had fish until I eventually get up to the stock I want. I've never had a problem doing it this way.

I don't add any ammonia or BB starter and don't worry about a formal cycle. There is bacteria on the plants as well as some ammonia from dying leaves etc.

 

The notion of an "instant-cycle" with established media is so misleading- especially for those new to aquarium keeping- who are still unfamiliar with the nitrogen cycle. I wish it would go back where it came from.
Better that newcomers learn that cycles depend on many factors that they will, in time, be able to respond to according to the situation. Until then, proceed with caution because there is much more to the nitrogen cycle then the API ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate test will tell you.
Like it has been mentioned, it takes months for a cycle to fully establish itself in aquarium- I have heard 3 months at temperatures above 75 degrees, more for temps below this margin. Until then, its best to proceed with caution.
I approach all my tanks differently according to their cycle:
I have a discus tank that has been running continuously for 10 years. I know that because it has such a well-established bio-filter, I can wash my mechanical cartridge in tap water every 2 weeks without a blip in its cycle. ~ wouldn't recommend this on a newly established bio-filter.
My 180 is 2 years old; but, the bio-load is heavier. With this tank I have 2 - FX 6 filters. I clean one filter every 2 months- completely- outside hosing it down: mechanical and biological. After cleaning I am cautious as the other filter reseeds the cleaned one- doing a water change of 50% on the 3rd and 6th day. ~ This method of cleaning and maintenance of the filters was not haphazard: I tested my water parameters and adjusted accordingly.
I have 2 -30 gallon tanks that have been established in the last year. I am much more careful with their cleaning. The mechanical consists of four sponges- I clean 2 every 2 weeks.
There is much more to the nitrogen cycle than a 0/0/5-20 reading.

 

The notion of an "instant-cycle" with established media is so misleading- especially for those new to aquarium keeping- who are still unfamiliar with the nitrogen cycle. I wish it would go back where it came from......

It came from professionals with decades of experience in tropical fishkeeping, breeding, and selling. In the simplest terms 'Instant cycle' is nothing more than providing sufficient beneficial biology in a new tank to deal with the ammonia generated by a limited initial bio-load (diluted by the fresh, pure water in a new setup and augmented by plants).

It's so logical it's surprising to me that the merit is questioned. :frown2:

 

There is more bacteria living on surfaces (substrate, hardscape, biomedia) than in filter water. It is best to take a few pieces of biomedia or a small bag of biomedia placed in a mature filter for a week then put in a new tank to jump start the cycle. It works much faster than doing a fishless cycle (on the order of a week or two) instead of a month or three.
Does filter water with mulm contain bacteria? (Probably yes but not in as high concentrations as on the surface of biomedia).

Now when you talk about 'Instant Cycling' that is a very subjective dicussion. To me cycle is done when your BB in your tank can process more Ammonia than you are ever introducing into the tank so that you never test the presence of Ammonia or Nitrite, other people have different definitions.

One thing is certain adding filter water and Mulm to your new filter if that is all you have is a good idea, but any mature filter(months) should be able to handle the removal of 1/4 of the biomedia to place in a new filter which IMO would be faster and more efficient.

 

I have always heard the opposite, that there is more beneficial bacteria in and around the filter- where the oxygen is highest.



This:

"The good bacteria can live on any surface in the aquarium. However, like all organisms ever, they concentrate their populations where their limiting factors are best met. In an aquarium the two things that are the most limited for the bacteria are food and oxygen. Filters provide flow which provides food and oxygen. The surface area of the biomedia provides a surface for the bacteria to grow on where they can sit and allow the oxygen and food to come to them. At the end of the day it is not the biomedia itself that is anything magical, it is nothing more than surface area per volume. The bacteria are happy to grow on any surface, but they do not simply spread out evenly throughout the aquarium. Although any surface area in the tank (decor, glass, substrate, etc.) are otherwise perfectly acceptable, they do not have the same flow as the filter and therefore will not house significant colonies of bacteria."

Link with further information on filter/substrate bacteria:

Cycling and Understanding the Good Bacteria | Advanced Aquarium Concepts

 

Here I'm forced to agree with cl3537. In most aquariums the surface area the filter can house is tiny compared to the tank substrate, not to mention hardscape, surfaces and in our case all the plants. The only exception might be if your using a large canister on a small nano.

There were many times over the years where I did a water change and forget to plug the filter back in sometimes for days. All the bb was dead and the tank did not cycle. Trying removing all of your substrate and see what happens

Once the tank matures the filter is primarily a flow device. I usuallly fill it with filter foam for mechanical filtration and have very little biomedia in it.

 

Another thing to consider, which this article addresses, is that surface area is only one of the factors that must be met in order to harbor the growth of nitrifying bacteria. If the other two aspects are not sufficiently met, food and oxygen, then surface area alone will not be enough to sustain the bacteria in high numbers. Certainly, there is nitrifying bacteria throughout the aquarium; but, the larger percentage of bacteria is in the filter itself.

The author explains this:

Surface area doesn’t equal bacteria. Bacteria need much more than surface area to survive, thrive, and establish colonies. Many people focus only on surface area, which is the most ample resource bacteria have, there is no reason at all to think this alone would be a determining factor to where they live. They will grow where their most limited resources are found. Those resources are oxygen and food, both provided by flow, which in any tank is highest in the filter.

In an established aquarium, one that is over 3 months, as @somewhatshocked explained earlier, you have a greater concentration of biofilm and aufwuchs ( microorganisms and crustaceans) that are also important to the maintenance of a healthy aquatic environment- offering alternative food source for shrimp, snails, fish, etc...


Additionally, researchers have found multiple bacteria necessary to a healthy eco-system that go far beyond what we are able to test for. Again, you will see in this article that the filter is the primary site of bacteria for nitrification.

:
Researchers in Germany and Switzerland used next generation sequencing to study an active aquaponics system. They sampled a biofilm from the side of the tank, the fish excrement, the plant roots, and the inside of the tank filter, called a biofilter. The biofilter is where much of the nitrifying bacteria live, and where the bulk of the ammonia-to-nitrate conversion takes place.
https://sciworthy.com/new-study-elaborates-on-what-aquarium-owners-already-know/

 

I actually misunderstood the post as well. Once a tank matures there is more BB in the tank itself between the substrate, plants, hardscape then there is in the actual filter in most cases as indicated in post #22

 

I've had to grow bacteria in a bucket when my bio media failed. Yes, I did use ammonia, no fish were harmed as it was in a bucket that contained a filter, heater and a air stone. Fast forward to a few years later, I still have that media that was cycled in a bucket.

As for the theory that a person can have a fully established tank by simply using dirty filter media, no. It helps, but bacteria also need to be fed which many people seem to forget. They will use something like Dr.Tim's, then leave the tank for weeks while doing nothing in terms of 'feeding' so the tank needs to be recycled as starving bacteria die.

 

Links to those articles “you have read”?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Links to those articles “you have read”?

I do not have links to items I've read over the last 30-40 years.

I would point out to you the flawed logic in the one article you linked...

The author indicated one case where he moved an established filter to a new tank. In another case, he replaced all of the substrate and decor. In both cases there was no cycle upset. Based on this he concluded that ALL of the BB resides in the filter. WRONG assumption. I did not see where he put a new filter on an established tank!
All I can conclude from the article is that there is BB in the filter...but we always knew that.
It was quite a stretch to conclude that BB did not exist anywhere else.

Like I said, articles are written by people with beliefs and opinions. The reader must closely evaluate the merits of any of their conclusions.

 

Escalating should not be a privilege and not taken lightly as it speaks to character.
Another thread gone wrong.

 

this back and forth cracks me up. It was a great fathers day read.

 

And you likewise have been rude and condescending. You feel you have a right to it and others are not to respond in kind.
Must have something to do with that sense of self-importance.

You can discount the evidence Ive provided- that's fine. But, maybe it would prove more productive to actually concentrate on providing evidence to strengthen your own position. So far, it has lacked any substance.

 

You can discount the evidence Ive provided- that's fine.

This is what you linked to:

https://sciworthy.com/new-study-elaborates-on-what-aquarium-owners-already-know/

They just poorly paraphrased this article:

-------------------------------------------------------
Archives of Microbiology

May 2017, Volume 199, Issue 4, pp 613–620 | Cite as

Microbial diversity in different compartments of an aquaponics system
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I pulled the paper and here is the relevant paragraph from results and discussion.

"The biofilter sample contained large numbers of Nitrospira (3.9% of total community) that were found only in low numbers in the periphyton or the plant roots. On the other hand, only small percentages of Nitrosomonadales (0.64%) and Nitrobacter (0.11%) were found in the same samples (Table[censored]S3). Whereas the second group of organisms are commonly tested for in aquaponics systems and mainly held responsible for nitrification (Rurangwa and Verdegem 2015; Zou et[censored]al. 2016a), Nitrospira has only recently been described as total nitrifier (Daims et[censored]al. 2015), being able to directly convert ammonium to nitrate in the system. The dominance of Nitrospira is thus a novelty in such systems and might be correlated with a difference in the basic setup of the aquaponics system (Graber et[censored]al. 2014). It must be noted that the increased presence does not necessarily correlate to a larger activity of these organisms in the system, as the metabolic activities were not measured. The periphyton contained larger numbers of the putative denitrifiers Dokdonella and Thermomonas (Tian et[censored]al. 2015) than on plant roots or in the biofilter (Table[censored]S3). This potential of denitrification would partially explain the loss of nitrogen in the system that is only possible by measurement of the complete nutrient balance (Graber et[censored]al. 2014; Schmautz 2015). "

These results are inconclusive. Nitrospira is not handling the majority of the ammonia load it mainly oxidizes nitrite. There are putative nitrifiers in the periphyton(substrate and hardscape) that are likely to contribute but they reduce Ammonia to Nitrogen gas. This topic is complex and a definitive answer will likely not be readily available.

 

Okay, now I'm responding as a moderator and not a hobbyist:

Enough with the trolling, condescension and general jackassery.

I will not clean this thread up again.

 

This is the problem when you link to articles that are outside the hobby. For example Aquaponic systems don't normally have a substrate. So any conclusions are completely irrelevant to the discussion.

 

I have seen this subject passionately argued for as long as I've been on the internet but I've never understood the certainty by which it's debated on either side. If you consider the myriad of different filters used in the hobby, the various medias used therein, differing flow rates, along with the endless substrate choices available and depths of these, etc., I don't see how anyone can definitively say where most of the BB reside in every system. And planted aquariums add another layer to this. I'm sure many of us have had a filter die on a planted tank. In my experience these systems tend not to miss a beat from a long week (or more) without filtration. On a bare bottom fry tank a filter stoppage can cause a wipe out within hours. This could lead some to opposite conclusions, but the fact is the variables on these systems aren't remotely the same.

We tend to believe what we are told until we see evidence to the contrary. When I got into this hobby back in the days of Metaframe tanks, it was said that "the good bacteria live in your filter" and I took it at face value. Some would even recommend two smaller filters rather than one large one so you wouldn't have to change out cartridges at the same time. As years went by, it became apparent that old tanks are much more forgiving than new ones. In fact, it seemed to be the biggest determining factor. Fast forward to the early days of pressurized CO2 and everyone told us not to have surface agitation or you'd off-gas the CO2 you were trying to inject. I'd panic if evaporation made a spraybar break the water surface. Now I'm seeing people using pressurized CO2 with sumps. Just using that aside to illustrate that conventional wisdom, especially when it intuitively makes sense often goes unchallenged for a long time.

I don't really have a strong opinion on where "most" of the BB lives in a hypothetical aquarium. I tend to think that the newer the system is, the less you have outside of the filter and the more plants you have, the less it even matters.

 

We tend to believe what we are told until we see evidence to the contrary.

Aquarium articles are not academic level publication worthy, they don't require the same level of scrutiny or peer review, they dumb things down, use simpler language and provide less robust proof, complications, and details. If you write something wrong or misleading it is doubtful anyone will mention it in marketing or web literature. Topics that are many fine shades of gray are simplified to black or white for mass consumption.

Some very simple minded (Anti Science) people find comfort in them and are blissfully unaware of the academic research, science, details, and complications behind the pillars of aquarium advice. Almost everything professed here either came from academic research or repurposing chemicals or equipment from other uses.

Tom Barr's EI was not a novel idea, it wasn't ground breaking, it was built on top of foundations of other dosing systems at the time (like PMDD) and based on reading and building upon previous academic research.

The very best in this hobby (a few examples: Tom Barr, Vin Kutty, Dennis Wong) to name a few embrace Science and Academic literature and are able to move this hobby forward in its understanding and results by keeping on top of current academic advances.

Unfortunately there will always be those who are stuck with very rigid limiting beleifs and who are unable to see any other way of doing things or learning, and much like the Luddites they will largely be ignored or change their views slowly over time.

 

@Cl5357 I feel like you are being argumentative even though we are in general agreement. Perhaps the condescending final paragraph is just leaving me with that taste though. Tone is difficult to judge through the written word and I've been guilty of coming across as callous myself so will try to word this thoughtfully.

The amount of available information has probably increased a thousandfold in the 40ish years since I got my first aquarium. In the beginning advancements were made by large leaps forward. Aerating and heating water were surely game changers of their time. It's doubtful that any new discoveries will will affect aquarium keeping at that level but that does not mean they are unimportant. Today anyone entering our hobby or starting an aquarium with new species has a tremendous amount of information literally at their fingertips. I do not discount the many scientists and researchers and the contributions they have made -I doubt a hobbyist in his basement figured out the nitrogen cycle or that the pH scale is logarithmic. But ours is a hobby where discoveries are not limited to those who hold a PhD. Anyone who keeps aquariums has the potential of contributing something valuable to the community. Many, many first breeding of species in captivity happens in private homes, not zoos and public aquariums. Changes in design to our filters, heaters, and lighting have come largely from the clamoring of hobbyists who wanted a better mousetrap. None of this makes academic publications less important, I simply think that scientific researcher's interests do not always align with ours. Even though we benefit tremendously from their work, some of the questions we have will never be asked outside of the private sector.

I'll end it here at risk of rambling. To the subject at hand, bacteria live in our aquariums and there's no ratio for what percentage reside here or there in every single system. Assuming both are healthy, newly set up tanks are not as stable as old ones. Seeding speeds things up but is not instant. I think a lot of us could stand to put the caresheets, papers and books down for a few days and listen to the fish, inverts and plants and maybe try to rediscover the innate inquisitiveness that drew us to the hobby in the first place. And I'll include myself in that group.

 

So well stated.

Time to get off of this roller-coaster and back to my community of fish friends. :smile2:

 

Regardless of where 'the most' bacteria lives, I think the term 'instant cycle' needs to be better communicated. Far too many people are under the false impression that if they simply seed a filter that they can run out and overstock a tank. For those that are new to the hobby, it comes as a surprise when they start either losing fish or the fish start getting sick as their tank can't handle the new and often large bio load. Then when said people are told that they need to get on water changes ASAP, they often argue about how their tank is cycled.

It isn't just hobbyists that toss this annoying phrase around as companies just as guilty of using it and probably make a decent profit from it. There is nothing wrong with stocking a tank lightly and gently for the first few months. There isn't a shortage of fish to buy....

 

100% Agree.