House Move... Eek

[Emsjob]

Hi my daughter has just moved from her fathers home to ours and brought with her an axolotl. Lancealot. She was moved in a box of freshly balanced water and my daughter has been 100% water changing her everyday. The tank is set up but the filter has given up the ghost, we have one on order. Weve been told to keep her in the box wirh daily 100% water changes for 6 months while filter and water is cycled. She is gettong quite stressed with being caught everyday. Any tips on speeding up the process of getting her back into her tank. She is a single specimen. No tank mates. Sand substrate was moved in situ in tank with a small amount of water. Thank you

 

[PBM3000]

Hi. Have you thrown the filter away? If so, that's unfortunate because you could have kept the filter media within despite the filter itself dying. This media houses the all-important beneficial bacteria (BB) and transplanting at least some that into a new filter makes it 'cycled' almost instantly, certainly within a day or two. That you retained the substrate is a good thing - there'll be plenty of BB on that which will 'propagate' on the new filter media in short order. I wouldn't think the new filter will take six months to cycle. I'd be surprised if it took six days!

Failing that, get some used filter media from a friend or from your local hobby shop if they're willing and you needn't wait for the new filter to 'mature' when it arrives. Hope this helps.