beneficial bacteria

[rickztahone]

I purchased a couple of eheim 2213's for my 10g shrimp tanks and i have a few questions. i bought them used so i had to look up the manual online. from the instructions i got that the filter needs to not have any water in it before it gets primed. being a current rena user, they always have water in the filter. So, these tanks i'm setting up will have these eheim's and i plan to transfer ceramic rings from my rena's to these 2. but my question is, doesn't the beneficial bacteria die off without being in tank water? if so, how long? i'm having one heck of a time trying to figure out how these filters work since, excuse me saying it to all you die-hard eheim fans, the rena's seem a lot more straight forward and simpler to set up.

So, in conclusion, do i put all the media in the main basket (there are no separate baskets so i'm assuming i just dump everything in there) without water, and then prime? or do i put water in the filter and then try to prime?

TIA

[rickztahone]

anyone?

[jimg]

I never leave bio materials out of water for more than 15 mins. It may take longer , but never had a problem in less than 15.
There is no reason you cannot put water in the filter. Filter has to be full to work. The media goes in coarse first (from bottom up) to fine