Transfering To A Bigger Tank Need Help!

[aibo210]

Hi

im going to upgrade my old aquaone 65l tank upto a juwel rio 125 soon and transfering my fish over to it whats the best way to go about it? my old tank is using a tetra ex600 external atm what i was thinking is:

Set new tank up with substrate and part clean water top up with old aquarium water run new juwel filter for a week and plant up!

after week 1: 50% Water change the juwel using part new water and old water from my 65l tank and remove and move EX600 from old tank and set up alongside juwel filter in new.

net and move fish straight into new tank

bag some gravel in a net and place in bottem of new tank ..............

I was going to run the ex600 with the juwel as I imagine its underated for the tank?

This sound the right way of doing it?

carl

 

[Cory_Dad]

Every thing you've done helps but it's really getting the bacteria started in the new filter that's really important. Swapping filter media between filters will do it but in your case there's big size difference.

I've heard of people also putting ammonia into the tank (from where or how I never found out) and when there is a 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and ~ 10 nitrate level then that indicates the tank has been cycled.

That's an interesting method and it seems sound but where to get the ammonia from, unless you collect the crap form all your tanks in a bucket and "brew" it. I imagine there's a commercially available source to.

But all the experts I've talked to say that basically you need to run the tank for 30 days to be safe.

Not the answer you wanted to hear I bet.

Cheers.

 

[Essjay]

I upgraded my 60 litre to a rio 125 about 18 months ago. This is what I did. I filled the rio with new water and let it run for a few days to check there were no leaks and that the filter and heater worked OK - my heater had no dial on it so this gave me chance to find out how far I needed to turn the knob to get the right temperature.
Then on change over day, I put all the fish into a large bucket. I removed some water from the new rio, and tranfered all substrate, plants, decorations etc from the old tank and topped up with water from the old tank. I also put all the media from my old filter into the new one, but I could have just moved the whole old filter like you want to with your external. Lastly, I put the fish into the new tank. I kept a close check on ammonia and nitrite for a couple of weeks and never saw anything other than zero for either of them. Once I was satisfied I wasn't going to have a mini cycle, I added more fish a few at a time with no problem.

I have seen in other peoples posts that the filter contains the right amount of bacteria for the fish you already have. If you move the whole filter and do it quickly so none of the bacteria die off, it doesn't matter if the tank volume is different. Just wait a while before adding new fish to make sure everything went OK during the transfer.

 

[Tolak]

I always transfer fish straight over with their filter. 100% fresh, or nearly so if I leave a few corys in, water same temperature. The fry tank filter follows the fish through a series of tanks until they get sold, then back into a fry tank it goes. With each move they often get a second sponge filter, sometimes cycled, sometimes not.

If I shut down a lot of tanks, which often happens for a few months during the summer some of the fry filters stay cycled in a larger tank, some go in a box.