Jim,
Am currently cycling a hospital tank. It's a bare 20g with a PVC elbow and T for the fish to hide in if they need to. The H-tank has two small powerheads (for extra ciculation and aeration) and an Aquaclear 200 and an Aquaclear mini, with media chambers containing two foams each and NO carbon or anything else. The foams are where all the nitrifying bacteria are growing to handle the bioload of the animals intended for the tank.
If you already have cycled foams in a filtration system from one of your tanks, you can use them. Otherwise you are going to have set up the tank from scratch and cycle the thing. Could take six weeks or longer to cycle.
I started the cycle in my 20g with a tablespoon of dry food, which is a lot imo, but I need to treat three fairly large fish in that little 20g. Tank has been set up at least three weeks. About a week ago, I got a 0 ppm reading of ammonia and have about 5 ppm nitrite. I now feed the tank daily with about 1/2 teaspoon of dry fish food to sustain the ammonia-eating bacteria as well as to continue building up the nitrite-eating bacteria.
Don't know what nitrite levels are today, but am going to clean the algae off the glass, do a 5 gal water change, then clean the filtration systems and foams in the outgoing changewater. I know the foams are very cruddy from all the food I've been feeding and from algae I cleaned off the glass last week. I think I'm getting close to the end of the cycle, so I want to test the tank after a through cleaning to see how ammonia and nitrite fare. Afterward, I will continue to feed the tank daily and test for ammonia and nitrite every other day. When I am positive the tank has cycled, I'll clean the foams again, then in go the fish.
When the tank is fully cycled and ready for the fish, I will remove all the water from the 20g. Right away, I am going to move 10g from the 72g ick tank to the H-tank so the fish are not shocked by the change in water params. I will replace that 10g with NSW, then add 10g more from the 72g to top up the 20g, then top the 72g with another 10g of NSW.
When beginning to cycle your tank, imo, you can use water from any tank you have. But the article I posted suggested doing a water change and using water from the ick tank when adding the fish so are not shocked so much by the move.
HTH.
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