cycling a cf1200

[blueether]

My cf1200 arrived this morning, all setup and running in a 80L plastic rubbish bin to de-chlorinate some water for when I set up my new tank

Do I grab a bit of foam from the current setup and place it in the bottom of the cf1200, after some of the chlorine has dissipated, and just run it in the rubbish bin with a bit of fish food to do a fish-less cycle?

or

Do I take all the media from the current setup, place in the bottom of the cf1200 and run that in the current ~50L tank (I guess the torrent fish will like that)?

I don't think I'll be able to set up the new tank until the new year, but when I do get to set it up I want to be able to get it running as fast as possible. When the new tank is setup there will be the same amount of fish (for at least a little while) in about 8x the volume.

[Adrienne]

the best way is to transfer as much media as you can from the current set up to the new filter but only do it when you are ready to put the new filter in the tank.

[the-obstacle]

+1 - add the current filter media to the 1200 on the same tank that the media came from. The 1200 will give it a good push around in a 50L tank but it's tunable. I currently have one seeding on a 20L grow out tank and it's doing really well.