Hello Fish Forums Folk!

I am an upstate NY owner of 3 10-gallon aquariums looking to expand/combine into a minimum of a 55 gallon, perhaps going larger (freshwater). I currently am keeping only Mollies (with the exception of 3 cory cats and 2 plecos). I believe I am going to stick with the Mollies for now as I really do enjoy their friendliness and the fact that they are live bearers and my daughter loves to see when a momma Molly gives birth.

We have probably 20-25 fry in one of the 10 gallon tanks and the other 2 tanks have the other Mollies (one tank is a hospital tank right now since I have been battling ich and now I think my one has another disease - trying to diagnose is difficult, even w/the literature/websites out there.)

I bought the Dummy book for Aquariums and I am very very nervous about upgrading to a large system. I am unsure of if I want to use live plants or not - what substrate I want to use - if I want both a regular filter and an underlaying one - or do I want a canister filter? How do I want to get the tank started - do I want to jump start it with the water/substrate from my current tanks or do a long drawn out process with guppies or danios to start it? All these questions are not *meant* to be questions.. so don't move them to a forum, just to let everyone know what I am thinking right now

I could read until I'm blue in the face and I am almost afraid to come to any type of forums because I think *everyone* who claims to be a somewhat "fish expert" is still going to all have conflicting opinions. But, here I am, hoping to weed through the variety of information to see what I can find and what I can use.

Nice to meet all of you and I will be doing a lot of reading and posting before I make the final choice on the large aquarium!

hi,
welcome to tff,
its best not to have an under gravel filter with plants as it takes away plant nutriants from the tank floor.
going bigger is not a big problem, if poss run the new filter inside your old tank along side the one thats already there, give it a few weeks then it will have all the good bacteria it needs to run your new bigger tank, then add fish a few at a time until they are all in the new tank, you dont need to add old tank water but if you want to it wont harm anything, good luck Donna