I am going to be setting up a 55 gallon in the next several days. About three weeks later, I'll be going out town for a 7-10 days and I don't want to burden my mother with water changes. I will be using a penguin 350 that has been going for a couple months and a peguin 330 which will probably just have bio balls instead of a bio-wheel.

I've seen bottled bacteria in the the Drs Foster and Smith catalog and I was wondering if it's a good idea and if it really helps. I know using biological filtration is usually an "if you book them, they will come" kind of thing, but I'd like to shorten my cycle if I can.

Anybody have any other tips for what to do with the tank before I go?

Thanks,

Scruffy

If you are fishless cycling, you won't be doing waterchanges until right before you add your fish. All your mom would have to do is add a bit of ammonia to the water every so often. If you are going to cycle with fish, then she will have to do water changes. There is no quick and dirty way of cycling really. Some claim that those bottled bacterias work, but there is no guarantee. BioSpira is supposedly good, but it is very easy to get a bad batch - too hot, too cold, too old... you get the idea.

Why doesn't your filter have it's biowheel? You can get these pretty cheap online and Petsmart is actually carrying some replacement ones now. They are very good for colonizing bacteria and for adding aeration - both good things when you are cycling! You may want to consider putting a heater in the tank if you are fishless cycling - it can help get the bacteria moving a bit faster. Somewhere in the high 70s up to 80 is good.

I bought the tank from Craig's list. It came with an iron stand, glass top, heater, and a peguin 330 with nothing in it but the pumping parts. It doesn't have a lid, bio wheel, brackets for the wheel, filter media, nothing! But it all cost $100. I went on the manufacturer, website and the missing parts cost about the same as a new penguin 330. I've been intrigued by the idea of customized filter media and think it might be cheaper to have a bag of bio balls in the thing than getting all those parts. I posted about this in the tanks part of this forum.

Unfortunately, I will most likely be cycling with fish. I have two fish in each of two ten gallon tanks. I really want them settled into a larger tank a month before my trip, but it depends on how quickly I can refinish the iron stand and I hate sandpaper!

S