How long does bacteria transfer take?

[BeefyG]

I have a coworker that is buying a new tank tomorrow and I have promised to give him free gravel. I have some that came out of a tank I bought and sold but the new owner didn't want the gravel. I washed it really well and put it in a large mesh bag in my goldfish tank tonight. My plan is to let it sit in there for a while and then send it home with him in a bucket of water when it is ready. How long will my established bacteria take to colonize the gravel in the mesh bag? Is water enough to keep it alive for approximately 10+ hours or does it need oxygen? Will this effectively bypass the nitrogen cycle? I would rather send it with him tomorrow but that may be too soon.

[newb]

you could let him borrow some of your filter media.

[Nickintex]

you could let him borrow some of your filter media.

+1
or can anybody near him let him borrow a sponge filter that is already in use?

[newb]

maybe see if Dustin up at HAW will help him out with a used sponge filter. Im sure he would be fine with helping out a customer...I hope im not speaking for him.

[soymilk]

I have a coworker that is buying a new tank tomorrow and I have promised to give him free gravel. I have some that came out of a tank I bought and sold but the new owner didn't want the gravel. I washed it really well and put it in a large mesh bag in my goldfish tank tonight. My plan is to let it sit in there for a while and then send it home with him in a bucket of water when it is ready. How long will my established bacteria take to colonize the gravel in the mesh bag? Is water enough to keep it alive for approximately 10+ hours or does it need oxygen? Will this effectively bypass the nitrogen cycle? I would rather send it with him tomorrow but that may be too soon.

I don't believe that would be enough to bypass cycling the tank. It would be nice if you could have left the gravel in your tank for 1-2 weeks for the bacteria to really get establish itself on the gravel.

You're only really helping him seed the bacteria into the tank, its a good start but it aint over yet. It'll still be a while before he should stock his tank.

[imagirlgeek]

Even if the gravel was good and seeded, I don't think the bacteria would be any good without O2/water flow. Have you ever disconnected a filter, put it aside and come back to it a few hours later? No? Just me? Okay. Well, it smells. And it doesn't take long. Geoff_tropheus told me once how long it takes for a filter to go bad without power...I think it was 6 hours? 8 hours? Maybe he'll read this and can confirm.

[algarciajr]

I have given people the filter padding off of established tanks to help cycle a tank quicker and I have even seen Dan at HAW take a sponge filter and ring it out into a bag to help cycle tanks faster.

Geoff_tropheus told me once how long it takes for a filter to go bad without power...I think it was 6 hours? 8 hours? Maybe he'll read this and can confirm.

I was without power for 12 hours during Ike, and everything was fine when the power came back on.

I once left a filter without power for 24 hours when I moved into a new house and that one went bad, I ended up losing some fish because of that.

[BeefyG]

Well, I was in a hurry this morning so the gravel got left behind. He is getting the tank from HAW and John and Dustin have always been great to me so I'm sure we'll figure something out. I was going to get an extra sponge filter today anyway so I guess I could loan the one thats already running in my tank to him. I was just focused on giving him seeded gravel because then all I have to worry about getting back is my mesh bag. I don't plan on going to his house and helping set it up because he is way north and I'm way south.

[Complexity]

Give him dirty filter floss. Any floss material that's good and dirty would work very nicely. Alternatively, squeeze out the crud from your dirty sponge. That brown "dirty" looking stuff is filled with bacteria.

When I started up my 90g, I used my Rena XP4 from my 75g to jump start my two XP4s on my 90g. I split the media into half, giving each new filter one of the two halves, but what really did the trick was putting in the extremely dirty filter floss. I had already put two of these pads in my 75g filter in preparation for the 90g. These pads were filthy which was perfect. The tank cycled pretty much immediately (for the low fish stock of a new tank).

So anything you can do to seed your friend's new filter with that dirty, brown crud is what will help the most.

This is one time when passing on your dirty crud to a friend really is a good thing!