Seeding my tank

[C-Dub]

K so I got nice clean clear water in my new 55gal sump set up, and a cycled 10 gal tank with a power filter that's media should be changed shortly. How do I do this? The fish currently in the 10 gal are moving into the new tank.

[skinni]

your just gonna want to move the old filter media from the 10g to the new tank then begin your cycle, The old filter media will help to speed your cycle along

[C-Dub]

do i put it in the sump? or just dump it into the tank? And I have to put ammonia in there and do a fishless cycle? or can i just put my fish from the ten gal in there right away seeing that there's enough bacteria in there to take care of their ammonia? I was thinking i could just run the old 10gal filter with the old media in the sump along with the new sump filter. Would that work? And what should I do with the old substrate from the 10gal?

[Fishalicious]

If you are cleaning the 10g filter out completely the least messiest way is to add it to the filter... you can then already add a few fish to keep the cycle. You can also just clean the filter meda of your 10g in the 55g which will be messy (water turns dark brown) but with a good filter this is all clean again by the next day. Another option as you say is to add the filter to the tank as well and run it extra...

There are a lot of bacteria in the gravel also so you may want to think of siphoning it out and also adding it to the new tank.

Stock slowly as the bacteria added is for a 10g

[C-Dub]

Ahh thank you, ok so I think i may just stick to my original plan, ill go out buy another little power filter for my ten gal, then i will run the old 10gal powerfilter with the old media in addition to the new filter in my 55gal tanks sump.. I will start with my 4 gold pristella's... let them get aquainted with the tank, then maybe add 1 cori a few days later then the other cori, followed by the serpae's the following week....does that make sense and sound like it will work? with obvious frequent water tests.

[Lady Hobbs]

I do it the same way. Sounds gross to add that nasty stuff to your new tank but it does get things going faster and cleans back up right away.

Congrats on your new tank.

[country_boy454]

Congrats on the new tank. I did the same thing. Took the filter off my 42g and am running it on my 55g.

[C-Dub]

thanks guys, I'll be sending pics, updates and results.