In Need Of Advice

[Itinerarian]

My partners mother has just given us a 4 foot tank along with instructions on how to set it up. I followed her instructions. Like many others new to the hobby I had not heard about fishless cycling. I wish I had read more about keeping fish and listened less to his mother. I'm now worried about the fish in my new tank. I've read alot of the other threads and could do with some advice. I realise i need to do some cycling with the fish in. But i have a few questions.
I have a smaller tank that has been set up for a while can i use the filter media from that in the new tank and if i can how do i go about doing it?
The new tank has an undergravel filter but the old one has an internal filter, what kind is best?
Any advice would be great.
Thanks

 

[afishdude]

any filter besides an undergravel is good. the undergravel is unheard of now a days.
yea you can take some of the media from the old tank and stick it behind the new one in the new filter. (so the water goes through the old one then the new one).

 

[-germ-]

Take about a 1/4 of your old media from the small tank and exchange it with new media from the large tank.
Also try squeezing (like you would when you clean it) the old media onto the new.....

To do the best thing by your fish you should be ideally performing 50% water changes daily until the cycle begins to establish itself.
Try buying some SeaChem Prime which should help your fish out.

UGFs are considered fairly poor and as long has it has a high enough turnover, i'd use the internal filter.

 

[loachman]

usually, you can just cut/take a piece of the old filter media and stuff it into the new filter. That'll instantly seed your tank with some bacteria and will at worst speed up the cycle process by a heafty amount.

For a 4 ft tank, it'd suggest an external filter. They generally work best for large tanks. Internals and hang on backs work decent for smaller tanks. Undergravel will work fine for a while, but they trap stuff under the gravel and you need to tear it up and clean it all out once a year or so...which is a gigantic pain/mess.