I Need Some Help

[JohnWilksB00th]

I am kind of new to fish tanks. I currently have a 30 gallon tank filled with cichlids and a breeding pair of convicts. I am going to purchase a 110 gallon tank with an aqua clear power filter regulated for 110 gallons, filters 500 gallons per hour, with three stage filtration system. Well I have a few questions...1st is do I need an overflow system or will I be fine with a filter only? Also I do water changes but I dont clean the gravel as often as I should. Is this going to hurt my fish? I am wondering because I have fry in my tank and I dont want to suck them up as I am cleaning the gravel. Should I only clean the gravel that the fry are not by? I am thinking of making my 30 gallon tank as my convict tank and moving the rest of my chiclids over to my 110 gallon tank. Should I only move over a couple of the fish at a time or will I be fine moving 6 fish when I get my tank setup? Sorry for all the questions. I just dont want to kill all my convicts that I have had for about 1 year.

 

[JohnWilksB00th]

also what would happen if i add some of the water from my established tank to the new tank? would this help with anything? or do i need to go with the fishless cycling for a few weeks or so?

 

[mystus]

also what would happen if i add some of the water from my established tank to the new tank? would this help with anything? or do i need to go with the fishless cycling for a few weeks or so?

This will probably help with the cycling although it won't be completely cycled though.

For water changes usually the baby fry will stay close if not in the parents mouths so you should be safe to just syphon but if you want to be extra careful u can just syphon the opposite side of the tank.

THe cichlid parents should be fine because they will probably set a territory and defend it from your other fish. So its up to you if you want to leave them in the other tank.

 

[onebto]

I am no expert especially as I have always used sand as a substrate but I would recommend cleaning the substrate regular basis.

I guess if you cant put the fry in another tank then you just got to be careful when cleaning and check the water you have sucked out afterwards to see if you have sucked up any of the little guys after the water and waste has settled.

As I understand it water holds hardly any beneficial bacteria its the filter media that holds the main Bacteria so moving over some of the filter media from your old tank and put it in the filtration system with the new stuff it will help to colonise and speed up your cycling

I would read some of the articles posted here on this website on this matter.

I take it you have a water test kit? API do some of the best.

I hope this helps and I am sure someone more experienced than I will post soon to give you some more precise advice

 

[JohnWilksB00th]

also what would happen if i add some of the water from my established tank to the new tank? would this help with anything? or do i need to go with the fishless cycling for a few weeks or so?

This will probably help with the cycling although it won't be completely cycled though.

For water changes usually the baby fry will stay close if not in the parents mouths so you should be safe to just syphon but if you want to be extra careful u can just syphon the opposite side of the tank.

THe cichlid parents should be fine because they will probably set a territory and defend it from your other fish. So its up to you if you want to leave them in the other tank.

so if i use some of the water from my established tank into my new tank should i use buckets to transfer the water or can i use the syphon to transfer the water that way?

I am no expert especially as I have always used sand as a substrate but I would recommend cleaning the substrate regular basis.

I guess if you cant put the fry in another tank then you just got to be careful when cleaning and check the water you have sucked out afterwards to see if you have sucked up any of the little guys after the water and waste has settled.

As I understand it water holds hardly any beneficial bacteria its the filter media that holds the main Bacteria so moving over some of the filter media from your old tank and put it in the filtration system with the new stuff it will help to colonise and speed up your cycling

I would read some of the articles posted here on this website on this matter.

I take it you have a water test kit? API do some of the best.

I hope this helps and I am sure someone more experienced than I will post soon to give you some more precise advice

no i dont have a water test kit yet. the 1st tank i had i didnt know i needed to cycle. so i added water and then i added fish. oops. well i had some fish live and quite a few die within the 1st month or 2. after that everything was fine. now i have 2 established tanks and am buying my 110 gallon tank tomorrow. so i guess i should probably do the fishless cycling before i transfer my fish from the 30 gal to the 110 gal. is that correct?

 

[mystus]

As I understand it water holds hardly any beneficial bacteria its the filter media that holds the main Bacteria so moving over some of the filter media from your old tank and put it in the filtration system with the new stuff it will help to colonise and speed up your cycling

This is true so John if you decide to put the aquarium water into the in tank and your fish immediately into the new tank you have to carefully watch your water perimeters and do 50% water changes if your ammonia or nitrite spike to a high amount.

 

[JohnWilksB00th]

As I understand it water holds hardly any beneficial bacteria its the filter media that holds the main Bacteria so moving over some of the filter media from your old tank and put it in the filtration system with the new stuff it will help to colonise and speed up your cycling

This is true so John if you decide to put the aquarium water into the in tank and your fish immediately into the new tank you have to carefully watch your water perimeters and do 50% water changes if your ammonia or nitrite spike to a high amount.

ok thanks for your help. i will probably give the fishless cycling idea a try this time. I will still however add some water from the established tank to the new tank as well to speed along the process some.

 

[mystus]

cool

sorry I couldn't help you with all your questions. Most of the experts start posting in about 8 hours I think.

Best of luck with your new tank and hope your cichlids give you plenty of fry.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi there and welcome to the beginners section,

Water from an established tank should be considered next to worthless when it comes to cycling a new tank, just so you don't get your hopes up! The real boost can come from getting a fishless cycle going, making sure your water flow, oxygen and ammonia levels are right for the fishless cycle and then, after all that, transferring up to 1/3 of the biomedia in your established filter over to a position just ahead in the water flow, or intermingled with, the new filter's biomedia. This is referred to as "mature media seeding" and needs to be done as a subset of already understanding fishless cycling. Having said that, I will now say that using some of your old tank water can't -hurt- and might contain a few stray cells of the two species you'll be attempting to grow during fishless cycling, but by far the best way to get a good "seed" of these bacteria is by physically moving them on mature media, which they cling tightly to.

As a beginner, what you'll need prior to this is some research, probably in the Hardware section, to verify your filter plans. Its better not to use the "recommended tank size" figures that manufacturers publish as they are often far too optimistic about how much water the filter will move. You need at least 5x turnover (# times the tank water volume turns over in an hour) and 10x or so if you happened to be planning a "planted tank" (70% of substrate covered in plants and more focused on plants than fish etc.) Many with tanks as big as you are discussing would go for two very large external cannister filters, in order to provide backup and greater capacity.

For your current tank you need to be working with the members here to learn all the basics. You need to get a good liquid-based test kit and learn to use it. You need to learn good gravel cleaning water changing techniques. Your homework is to read the nitrogen cycle, fishless cycle and fish-in cycle articles in the beginners resource center and come back here with your questions.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[JohnWilksB00th]

so does this mean that i should get a 2nd filter besides the AquaClear 110 Aquarium Power Filter. i know this one filters up to 500 gph? do i really need a 2nd filter?

 

[waterdrop]

I'm not saying it wouldn't work, using just the AC110, just that you might want to research it a little more in the hardware section, get some more opinions than mine, etc. Its close to capacity in a tech sense but in the long run it may feel better with more filtration and flow. You could certainly plan to augment the flow situation some with a powerhead placed somewhere low in the tank - that would help with any developing algae situations. The 110 is a good, flexible filter - a pretty straightforward open rectangular space in which you can customize your media pretty easily, so that's good!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Another way, one that I personally use, is to clean an old filter in a newly set up tank while the new filter is running. When you are done, put the old filter back where you got it and add your ammonia to start a fishless cycle on the new tank. I find the cycle is often done within the first week after I do that and I haven't harmed the established filter, it needs cleaning once in a while anyway.

 

[JohnWilksB00th]

thanks for everyones help. the 110 gallon tank fell through. so i think it might be a while before i get a new tank. so now i will stick with me 30 gallon and 10 gallon tank.

 

[waterdrop]

Sorry to hear your 110 deal fell through. Thanks for letting us know. Hopefully you can keep an eye on the growth rates and do things to keep the big cichlids from running out of room.

~~waterdrop~~