[celebritysk1n]

Hello and happy September,
My betta Sidd’s tank is finally cycled, ive been using a filter cartridge.

But I recently I decided that a sponge filter would be a better choice for his 5 gallon as it takes up less space and because I am sick of spending money on cartridges all the time. Sidd’s current filter took up an entire ‘compartment’ as I had a tank that came included with a built in filter. It just took up too much space.

Today doing my weekly water change I removed his old cartridge filter, freeing up more swim space and am going to the pet store for supplies for a sponge filter this evening.

My question is will adding a brand new filter with new sponge ruin all the work I went through to cycle my tank? I know that a lot of beneficial bacteria is stored in your filter media and if I start over with a new filter will this undo all my cycling causing me to start over?

I look forward to your helpful advice as always.- Grace

 

[imaal]

Hello and happy September,
My betta Sidd’s tank is finally cycled, ive been using a filter cartridge.

But I recently I decided that a sponge filter would be a better choice for his 5 gallon as it takes up less space and because I am sick of spending money on cartridges all the time. Sidd’s current filter took up an entire ‘compartment’ as I had a tank that came included with a built in filter. It just took up too much space.

Today doing my weekly water change I removed his old cartridge filter, freeing up more swim space and am going to the pet store for supplies for a sponge filter this evening.

My question is will adding a brand new filter with new sponge ruin all the work I went through to cycle my tank? I know that a lot of beneficial bacteria is stored in your filter media and if I start over with a new filter will this undo all my cycling causing me to start over?

I look forward to your helpful advice as always.- Grace

First of all, there's absolutely no need to be replacing and buying filter cartridges all the time. Just rinse out the existing cartridge in some aquarium water. The manufacturers recommend changing them solely to sell more cartridges. I have some that haven't been replaced for over a decade. The only time you need to replace them is when they begin to fall apart. By discarding them as you have been doing you are also discarding all the nitrifying bacteria that you worked so hard to build up. This puts your cycle at risk.

If you still decide to switch to a sponge filter--and I use both-- you should set it up and let it run in the tank for a couple of weeks while the cartridge filter is still running so your tank is never without the needed population of nitrifying bacteria.

 

[celebritysk1n]

First of all, there's absolutely no need to be replacing and buying filter cartridges all the time. Just rinse out the existing cartridge in some aquarium water. The manufacturers recommend changing them solely to sell more cartridges. I have some that haven't been replaced for over a decade. The only time you need to replace them is when they begin to fall apart. By discarding them as you have been doing you are also discarding all the nitrifying bacteria that you worked so hard to build up. This puts your cycle at risk.

If you still decide to switch to a sponge filter--and I use both-- you should set it up and let it run in the tank for a couple of weeks while the cartridge filter is still running so your tank is never without the needed population of nitrifying bacteria.

Thanks so much.. I am going to stick with my cartridge filter, using my cycled media. I am going to use some sponge filters in my larger tank that i’m setting up soon

 

[Imp]

Another alternative would be to add your own filter media to the existing filter. Since the cartridge's size is likely optimised for chemical filtration (check if that is the case for your filter, the cartridge will have carbon in it), you want to fill up all that empty space to improve the capacity of the biological cleanup.

It's fairly likely that there is enough space in the filter to add sponge material together with the old media. After a few weeks you can replace the old cartridge with even more media without problems. The only thing to watch out for is that you don't compress the media, causing a blockage or an overflow.