cold water to tropical

[debiasir]

I have a coldwater tank that i hope to change to a tropical tank (the goldies hopefully will be going in a pond)

is it a case of just adding a heater and adding the tropical fish i want or will i need to use new gravel, clean the tank out and so on.

cheers

 

[ncjharris]

In theory, adding a heater would be enough to keep tropicals.

However, I would recomend that you start from scratch, clean down the tank, gravel, decor and so forth (remember to avoid detergents/bleach), put everything back in and re-cycle the tank to start again.

This is mainly because there is no way of knowing what parasites/diseases the tank has been harbouring from the coldwater fish that could affect the tropical fish. Bearing in mind that goldfish produce a lot of poo, there could be a lot of stuff laying dormant in the tank, with a rise in temp all it needing to reanimate them.

That and it also gives you the opportunity to re-position everything in the tank - best bit of setting up a new tank (except for introducing the fish - duh )