Few Questions Regarding Tank Upgrading

[debiasir]

Few questions if any one can help with answers:

1) What contents of a tank holds beneficial bacteria (i.e. filter, substrate, water, decorations etc)?

2) what percentage and above would a water change be deemed unwise to carry out or potentially dangerous for the tanks inhabitants?

Reason I ask this is I have a new tank as of tomorrow and once all my new decorations and background come down I will be moving the fish from old to new. My current tank is 60 litres and the new one is 190 litres. I will be transferring across the gravel, bog wood, filter, fish lol and around 45 litres of tank water from the old tank. I will then be adding more gravel, new internal background, plants and new decorations, new additional filter and roughly 125 litres of fresh water (due to the space taken up by the gravel, ornaments filter etc) therefore I will effectively be doing a huge water change?

What have you done when upgrading from a small tank to a reasonable larger tank?

Thanks

Ps cant wait to get my new tank and expect a set up picture thread

 

[The-Wolf]

1) What contents of a tank holds beneficial bacteria (i.e. filter, substrate, water, decorations etc)?

most of you nitrifying bacteria will be in your filter and your substrate.
don't worry about the decorations. In fact this is an ideal time to scrub them.

2) what percentage and above would a water change be deemed unwise to carry out or potentially dangerous for the tanks inhabitants?

the only concern with the water is a possible pH difference. provided that your tap water and tank water have a similar pH a 100% change in this case would be ok however if you can add all your current water and then topup with new it would be better. (don't froget to dechlorinate)

 

[debiasir]

cheers The_Wolf aprreciate the post.

Ah would of forgot to scrub the decoration. Yep got my dechlor at the ready and ph not a problem.

cheers

 

[SLC Flyfishing]

Done this many times myself. the wolf is right, nearly all of your bio-filter resides in your mechanical filtration media and substrate, however they reside everywhere in your tank even on the decorations. So if you don't mind removing stuff from such a large tank from time to time and scrub them individually that would be even better. not a critical thing though. one thing I would do for sure is leave the old filter media there for as long as you can after the move. this will allow the bacteria in there to reproduce and send their little minions out into your new tank and colonize everywhere. if you change the media you throw the bacteria out with them. also if you have some lava rock or other rough surfaced decor, they will contain a large amount of nitrifiers.

Good Luck and congrats.

Bam's the man lol

SLC Flyfishing

 

[Nina]

When we upgraded from our 4ft to 6ft we added a sump instead of a canister filter and used sand instead of gravel so the filter media and the substrate was not going to used in the final running of the tank.

In order to preserve as much baterica etc my other half stole a pair of my tights and filled them up with the old gravel media and then put them in the sump to allow the new media to seed. Once we were sure the new media was able to run the tank we just removed the tights and the gravel in one go.

 

[debiasir]

the filter from the old tank will be teaming up with the new juwel filter so thats not a problem. I was more worried about replacing such a large amount of water