Possible bad seed filter during my fishless cycle

[SonicsDC25]

I just started my fishless cycle today in my 30g tank and I went to a friend's house to see if I could use his filter as seed material. He wasn't home, but his wife said that the tank is pretty clean and she see's him clean it weekly. I took the filter cartridge home and placed it into my tank, but about 1 hour later he called and said that one of his platys died a few days ago (had some kind of white fuzzy lump on the side of the body and fins were gone). I immediately took the filter cartridge out, but I'm worried that if his tank had some kind of parasite or disease, it'd be in my tank now after being in there for 1 hour. What should I do and should I be this worried?

On a side now, after I add my first dose of ammonia to start off my fishless cycle, when and how often should I be checking the ammonia level and when it starts to decrease, should I check for nitrite right away or wait a few days?

Thanks!  

 

[KaraWolf]

I've never had it in my own tanks but sounds like he had a case of Columnaris or a fungus of some sort. I wouldn't be too worried about it as most fish don't fall ill unless already rather stressed out and a lot of the things that cause disease are already in your tank (or will be shortly)

Personally trying to cycle my own tank and I check every 24 hours on levels because using an actual ammonia product can spike your tank amazingly fast and with seed bacteria it should cycle quickly as long as you keep on it every day. As soon as it starts to decrease you should get nitrite which will then spike and start to convert to nitrate. BUT you should add ammonia just about everyday to keep it between 4 and 8 ppm until you see the nitrite spike then you can cut the dose in half until you can feed it ammonia and both the ammonia and nitrite read 0 on the next 24 hour check. When it hits that point it will be ready for fish, though you should do a water change to bring the nitrates back down because at this point they will most likely be in the 160 range. The day before you get fish don't feed any ammonia so that the levels are at 0 when you put new fish in.

This is at least how I understand it from this http://www.wafishbox.com/t247-cycling-your-tank

 

[SonicsDC25]

most fish don't fall ill unless already rather stressed out and a lot of the things that cause disease are already in your tank (or will be shortly)

So the causes of that disease is already present in most fish tanks? If not, then shouldn't I treat the water somehow to prevent that bad bacteria that was in the seed filter from spreading?

 

[Madness]

Columnaris thrives on uneaten food. You have none of that. Also it will not survive in temperatures below 74 degrees.

 

[SonicsDC25]

I actually added a VERY small amount of grounded Cichlid food to add some phosphate to my tank and the current temperature in my tank is roughly 86 degrees to increase the bacteria growth for my fishless cycle Worried because I hear the bacteria can persist up to 30 or so days and also the cause of that fish's death could be some kind of Fungal Infection (as stated by Kara). I just don't want to spend weeks setting up a tank that could be possibly infectious and diseased...  

 

[SonicsDC25]

He was raising different sorts of platies and his water conditions were: 7.5 pH, 0ppm Ammonia, 0ppm Nitrite, but 80ppm Nitrate! I immediately helped him do a PWC, so now I'm wondering how that filter of his affected my fishless cycle now... Aside from that one death, all his other fish doesn't show any signs or symptoms of any diseases.