I Want To Help My Friends Tank!

[fapjat]

I am a beginner/novice fish keeper, I think, maybe just beginner. He has a 10 gallon tank that he wants to start over. The fish inside of the tank keep dying and the last one alive is on the brink of death. He has a feeder gold fish. Anyways, on Saturday, we are going to euthanize that sick fish and empty the tank and sanitize it so that no harmful pollutants are in it.

He has bought new gravel and I wanted to speed up the process of his tank by taking 10 gallons of water from my 100 gallon tank and add it to his clean tank. I would also give him some mature filter media and other goldfish from my other tank that I just got done cycling.

Will this method work instantly without spikes in ammonia or nitrites or will this be catastrophic?

I want to set him up with a couple of live plants to battle the algae build up before it starts.

I will also provide him with the basics to fish keeping tips provided by this forum.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Repeat]

I dont see any problems with it, but how do you plan to "sanitize" the other tank?

 

[Tolak]

Goldfish have no business being in a 10 gallon tank for any length of time. They are messy fish that grow quickly, often faster than a new aquarist can plan for and set up the needed larger tank.

I wouldn't bother with the water, water does not cycle, and holds such a small amount of beneficial bacteria that it can be regarded as none.

 

[Repeat]

I dislike goldfish very much, i set a tank up for my girlfriend and of course the first fish she got was one of those bubbly eye goldfish

 

[Creature Seeker]

I wouldn't completely disregard adding water from you own tank as if your adding fish from your own tank it will be less stressful for them if they settle into their new tank with their old water.

To battle the algae, you need to take in consideration the lighting. Does the tank have lights? How long are they one for each day? Is the tank in direct sunlight?

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[waterdrop]

Unfortunately, by the time you've read up here on what goldfish really need, you'll probably decide that -tropical- fish keeping is more in line with his equipment and easier. When you give away mature media from your filter, never take away more than 1/3 of your biomedia. Also, when you seed a new tank with mature media, you can't assume that it will "take" and will have cycled the new tank. Its really best used as a "seed" for cycling and testing.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[freerunner416]

Instead of using the water from your tank to help cycle his why not use some of your filter media? Surprised nobody has said that. That would make more sense to me.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yes you've got the right idea in transferring the 'good stuff' over to his tank from yours. what this good stuff is is bacteria, but it doesn't live free swimming in your water, it clings onto the sponges and other bits and bobs in your filter. if you read the link in my sig 'whats cycling' it explains a bit more about this good bacteria.

if you move over one third of the media from your filter to his that should set his tank up well to start adding a few small hardy fish.

however probably the best thing you can do to help him is get him to sign up to the forum and have a read through the pinned topics here himself, without a good knowledge of tank maintenance, stocking and cycling he'll probably have the same problems again regardless of how good a start you give him. if he's not internet savvy then just print them off for him and make up a sort of book that he can study before youdo the deed and get him some more fish.

 

[Creature Seeker]

I meant adding the water as well as adding beneficial bacteria from his original tank.

The beneficial bacteria should be priority, but adding water from an older tank is also wise as it will have safe parameters and fish transferred from one tank to the other will be used to the water.

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