The Puffer Forum

I bought an aquarium kit today to start a Brackish Aquarium (55 Gallon). And it comes with a filter, I am going to use this for cycling until I can afford a canister one.
My questions are;
1. When the filter charcoal bags are dirty how do I keep the bacteria that I worked hard on when cycling. And
2. How do I change to a new filter when the time comes, how would I get the bacteria to grow with the new one?

Thanks so much, I hope I am not annoying anyone

Ianb262 wrote:I bought an aquarium kit today to start a Brackish Aquarium (55 Gallon). And it comes with a filter, I am going to use this for cycling until I can afford a canister one.
My questions are;
1. When the filter charcoal bags are dirty how do I keep the bacteria that I worked hard on when cycling. And
2. How do I change to a new filter when the time comes, how would I get the bacteria to grow with the new one?

Thanks so much, I hope I am not annoying anyone

When the filter bag is dirty just rinse it off in a bucket with aquarium water. Although during cycling it shouldn't get too dirty, if you are doing a fishless cycle.

Using carbon is not necessary, although some people will always use it and others never.

When you add a new filter you can take the media from the one in use and put it in the new one. Or you can just run both filters until the new one has established its own bacteria colony, or keep both going.

I ran to PetSmart and picked up a Fluval AquaClear 70. It's meant for a 70gal but over-filtering would be nice

^^^^^^^^
Smart man!

Activated carbon is used as chemical filtration and so has a finite life which will probably be a matter of a few weeks and then it will need replacing. If the carbon is left in it will no longer be any good at chemical filtration but will become biological filtration.

Carbon isn't necessary for FW tanks.