upgrading to a 200g aquarium

[fishface33]

i have a 20g aquarium right now where i have 3 neon tetras, 3 red eye tetras, 3 cherry barbs, and 3 tiger barbs, when adding my old fish, can i do the water cycling for a couple days and than add all the fish, or what else? and when buying new fish what other spicies can i put in there (I really want a shark), or better yet whice once i should avoid. thanks in advance

 

[amazingbioloboydp]

A 200! i am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO jealous right now!

 

[Max]

A 200! i am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO jealous right now!

who isnt?

 

[Sky042]

If you're not going to fishless cycle the 200(reccomended) you could actually set it up then put the fish from the 20 in it along with any plants and decorations to help the cycle.

from there i'd add fish VERY slowly.

 

[CFC]

Fishless cycling will take a huge ammount of ammonia in 200 gallons of water. If you can see if your lfs will sell you some biological filter media from one of their filters, if they will then all you have to do is place it inside one of your filters and you have a instant set up that you can add your existing fish to right away. Usually you can just do this from tank to tank but the size difference between 20 and 200 gallons may be too great for the bacteria from your old filter to have any effect.

 

[fishface33]

i think what im gonna do is put a divider in the middle and make one have a cicilit ( can't spell it) tank

 

[daisycat]

Just to say that you won't need that much ammonia. We are currently fishless cycling a 105g tank and it took 5 tsps ammonia the first 3 days and then 2.5 tsps since then. We have barely made a dent in the bottle and already ammonia is back to 0 and now just riding out the nitrite spike. I reckon we will get through one bottle max (good job I bought 3 to be safe!!!) so you may need two bottles but it is hardly expensive stuff is it?! (the cycle details can be seen in the link in my sig).