I'm definitely a newbie but I just switched tanks over. I was suprised how quickly my tank cycled. I don't have much of a load on the new tank as I went from a 28 gallon to a 92. I had an Ehiem 2215 on the 28 gal and the new tank came with a Cascade 1500 As soon as I got the new filter I put some of the media from it into my existing filter. I ran it that way for a couple of weeks. Then I put the media back, along with some of the original media from the established filter. I had to do some other stuff since I was changing tanks, but I cycled the new tank with a couple of large goldfish from my pond. (dirty buggers). The new filter was knocking down the ammonia pretty quickly.