Removing carbon from Penguin filter cartridge
I never heard of a mini cycle but what I would interpret it to mean would be a short cycle. ie shorter then the average 4 to 6 week time. Different people have different ways of accomplishing this. Ways that I have heard include puting Bio Spira into the water (refrigerated bacteria) heavily stocking and feeding disposable fish (ammonia will climb too a high level fast) , adding pure ammonia straight from the bottle,I have even heard people suggest urine to cycle fast. I dont know if I would want to go with the last personally, if I ever wanted to cycle a tank again I would probably stock the tank with lots inexpensive gold fish and ask the LFS for either some gravel from one of the tanks or to have some of the slime from the filter tubes. I would then install these items upstream from the bio filter media. This would probably increase the time to 2 weeks. It would be fun to experiment with a combination of these things to see what would complete the cycle first[no ammonia or nitrites just nitrates].Found by testing the water. > > > What does ‘mini-cycle’ mean? Does it just mean that the N-bacteria are less > in number than the tank bio-load needs? > > Noura > > —– Original Message —– > From: “Lenny V. aka GoldLenny” > To: > Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 5:23 AM > Subject: RE: [AquaticLife] Removing carbon from Penguin filter cartridge > > > Once I cut the H, which is the best cut to make to open up the filter to > remove the carbon while still maintaining adequate filter frame strength, > there is no real need to bend them back and forth. It’s very pliable > plastic so all I do is just open up the bottom half of the H so I can tuck > an extra piece of filter floss pad in there so it holds it in place when I > slide the cartridge back down into the slot in the reservoir. As you saw > from my blog/photos, I use the blue/white kind which is much thicker and > better than the thin blue filter floss pad in the cartridge. > > I would save your new ones with the fresh carbon for the event of when you > might need to run fresh carbon… like after a medicinal treatment, etc. It > will only take a minute to cut the H and dump the old carbon and then you > can put the cartridge right back into the filter system so all of the > N-bacteria living on the filter floss pad will still be there. You will > lose some N-bacteria that were living on the carbon but you’ll have enough > on the filter floss pad so they will quickly multiply to keep a mini-cycle > to a bare minimum.. if at all. You also have N-bacteria living in the > gravel and on all surface areas in the tank so the ones you throw away with > the carbon will be only 20-40 percent of the overall N-bacteria that you > have so your remaining bacteria… especially those on the filter floss pad, > will multiply in 24-48 hours to handle the job of the ones that got throw > away. > > I see that you have two ages filters in the system so you could do surgery > on one now and wait a couple of days and then do the second filter > cartridge. This would further minimize any possibility of a mini- cycle. I > don’t think you’ll have a problem at all.. especially doing only one > cartridge at a time. Once you’ve done both of them, you will have increased > your filtration to a much higher capacity since you won’t have to worry > about that one thin filter floss pad on the cartridge getting clogged. Now > you will have four layers of filter floss pads. The back cartridge will get > clogged quicker so when it starts to slow down the water flow, turn off the > filter, remove the back cartridge for cleaning and move the front cartridge > to the rear. This will keep one fully cycled filter cartridge in your > system at all times.. even when you clean the other one good. > > Your other option would be to get a microscope and some microscopic tweezers > and pick each of the thousands of N-bacteria off of the carbon and > transplant them to the filter floss. JUST KIDDDDIINNNNNGGGG! 
> > Lenny Vasbinder > Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com >
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
