Well maybe you need to trade in your wife for a fish loving model?
It has been rumored that some wives react better to the arrival of a new tank if it contains a ;liece of expensive jewely or tickets to an exotic destination........
Rinse out the sponge in the new tank. That will help spread the bacteria to other places.
The biggest potential issue with a Q tank is when the reason we do them happens, Now the tank goes from being a Q to being an H tank, And this is where things can get complicated. Ii we fail to defeat whatever illness/infection/parasite is, and we lose the fish, then what happens to everything else in the tank? We need to eliminate the cause before we can reused things. Now this may mean letting them get bone dry for a while or bleaching it all to kill most things.
So, it is a good idea to plan for the worst. Live plants, real driftwood and some filter media can be difficult to disinfect without causing harm. So, it one is not prepared to throw out any live plants etc. If the worst case scenario happens, it may be better to use plastic plants and wood you can do without for an extended period or are willing to throw out.
My preferences has been to use live plants and real wood but I have so many extra plants is is no big deal and the same for wood. But for a true H tank I use plastic plants and rocks. and slate but not real wood unless it is something I would not normally use in a permanent tank because it is too small or a rally odd shape. But that is just how I do it and other folks do things differently.
