Friday afternoon I leave MSU to go home for Christmas break. I'll be gone a little over three weeks. Last year I took my tanks home and hauled them back. I do not want to do that again, its too risky. I have plenty of tanks at home to house my kids in so I'm not at all worried about places for them to go. I am worried about my cycle here though.

I plan to take the filter media and my biowheels home to at least keep the bio bugs alive on those and seed the tanks that my fish will be going into. I know I'll lose my cycles in my tanks in the dorm but I'm hoping that with the filter media it won't be too hard to build it up again.

I've never done that before I feel terrible about virtually purposfully destroying my cycles. Does anyone have any input on how I might be able to lessen the difficulties as much as possible? Any advice?

Also, when I do get back would it be safe to put them back into the water that had been sitting in the tank for three weeks? I plan to leave the filter and air going but there won't be any media in the filter, it'd just be for circulation. Of course I'll test it before putting the fish back but I'm just wondering about letting it sit unattended for so long.

If you're sure about taking the fish & media home with you, make sure you vacuum your dorm tanks really well. You don't want any left over food or poop growing things while you're gone.

Eeeewww Yeah, I'll make sure I'll do that. I pretty much have to take the fish home, I'll be gone almost a month and the dorms will be locked with no one there so there wouldn't be any way to drop by and feed them or anything. I figure I can at least perserve part of my cycle by taking the filter media home and keeping it alive sort of speak.