29 gallon new tank

Hi everyone I haven’t been on the forum for quite a few months. I got a 29 gallon tank and finally got around to setting it up. I used black diamond blasting sand and dragon stone. I want to add some driftwood and a ton of plants!! I don’t have enough money for plants at the moment so I am going to put the stuff I have in my 10 gallon in there and add as time goes on. I am hoping to get some new driftwood though. I want to add the fish as soon as possible. Eventually I will want to re home my current fish. In the 29 gallon I am planning on having 6 tiger ottos, 12-15 panda Cory’s, 15 toucan tetras and 15 Heterocharax virgulatus. Any thought and opinions would be great!!! My filter, and light are in the pictures below my heater is an eheim 100w heater I believe. I have set up tanks before but how long am I allowed to run it for until I can put the fish in? I made 2 caves out of the dragon stone.

I was looking on how to cycle the tank and it said you can add fish, just a few. So could I fill the tank and add 3 fish and see how it goes? Could I also add the plants. My 10 gallon is getting taken over by algae and snails surprisingly. I haven’t done a water change in a while because I’ve been busy so I think the sooner I get the fish in there the better.

If you move over the filter, substrate and decor from the 10g then the need for cycling is reduced. If not it sounds like you are planning to do a fish in cycle which can be quite stressful on the fish. Not that it's not doable but if you've been too busy to do water changes on your 10g you may want to reconsider a fish in cycle for the 29g as you'll need to do lots of regular water changes throughout the cycle.

Lcc86 said:

If you move over the filter, substrate and decor from the 10g then the need for cycling is reduced. If not it sounds like you are planning to do a fish in cycle which can be quite stressful on the fish. Not that it's not doable but if you've been too busy to do water changes on your 10g you may want to reconsider a fish in cycle for the 29g as you'll need to do lots of regular water changes throughout the cycle.

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Ok thank you. I am not moving over anything from the 10 gallon except the fish and plants. What are the other options for cycling a tank that I could do that might be easier?

Using your substrate is a good idea because you'll have tons of beneficial bacteria living in it. You could always cap it with your new substrate if you were planning on using something different

I don’t think I will use my substrate, my old substrate has fluval plant substrate which I found out isn’t very good and the other part of it is white sand and I don’t think the white and black sand would be a good ideas in case they ended up mixing together. I was thinking I could add my plants and fill up the tank and put the filter in and everything and then add ammonia. How long would that take?

What would be a good brand of ammonia I could use?