Cycling a new filter.

[Calvin and Kyle]

So I believe I will be getting a turtle this week! I'm pretty excited!

However a couple days ago I may have messed up. I did a water change and shut off my old filter to see if my new eheim 2215 is fully cycled. (I should note I cleaned the mechanical and chemical(purigen) TWO weeks ago and the biomedia was just nasty dirty so I cleaned it in old tank water but I think it's full of bacteria)

It has now been 3 1/2 weeks with both filters running. When I shut off the old one I think it was bad to do so when doing a water change at the same time. Especially since my tap water has ammonia of .5 I did use prime of course. But when I came home From work (7 hours later) the fish were gasping like there was an ammonia spike.

I emergency dosed it with prime immediately! And put the old filter back on. However without its media!! And after it had dried out!! And the fish are totally fine 12 hours later.

Do you think I just caused a spike and it is cycled? It scared me. But seeing as it has no media in the old filter and it dried out completely I don't know if it had anything to do with it or not. Sorry for the long post!

I tested it again last night by shutting the old one off overnight and the ammonia level rose slightly.

Do you guys think the new one isnt fully cycled? Or could be the no oxygen factor of the eheim?

 

[Andrew McFadden]

it probably not cycled all the way quite yet. By adding the other filter without any cycled media wouldn't have help quality but it could add oxygen. Aim the other filter up to the surface of the water to create more oxygen.

 

[Calvin and Kyle]

it probably not cycled all the way quite yet. By adding the other filter without any cycled media wouldn't have help quality but it could add oxygen. Aim the other filter up to the surface of the water to create more oxygen.

It was solely the oxygen. I removed the media from the old filter days ago and thought the ammonia level didnt raise enough for it to be gasping and the new filter doesn't disturb the surface at all.

So I bought an air pump. It's been running with the new filter for the last day or so. No problems yet! I'm still watching it, but it would seem it was a lack of oxygen.