Just Set Up My 37 Gal Tropical Community Tank

[WCMMchick]

Hi all,
 
I had a single comet goldfish in my 37 gal for years, but she passed last summer. So I decided to set it up as a community, and move my single gold WCMM and 2 gold barbs out of my 20 gal and into the 37 gal. Two weeks ago off I went to Petsmxxt to see what their sale was about. I found 2 regular WCMM and 3 long-finned Leopard danios and brought them home to see how they would do cycling the tank.
 
That's when I saw the problem which I will post in the proper place later. 
 
So the existing 20 gal became the hospital tank and the gold WCMM and the 2 barbs went into the big community tank to start the cycle. The good news is the plants look great under the new LED lights. I look forward to adding some more danios, WCMM, harlequin rasboras and eventually an oto, and some corys to play in the sand I added.
 
I'm excited to be part of this forum.

 

[BerryAttack]

you should be taking media from your already cycled tank and putting it into the new tank.. it'll cycle faster and you don't harm the fish in the process... 
 
now because you have schooling fish.. have a min of 3 in each school, and it is recommended IMO to have 6+, looks nicer.
now with otos they are schooling fish as well, are mostly caught in the while and need a very mature tank with lots of algae, then need to be weened so slowly to shrimp pellets (that's what i did and works like a charm) or they'll just die on you quickly.. 

 

[WCMMchick]

Thanks BerryAttack, for the info on the otos. I did place a bag of the white stone pellets in my established tank's filter for about 3 months then moved it when I started the new tank's filter. I also moved all my plants and some rocks and driftwood. So hopefully it will cycle faster. 
 
If I didn't get a school of otos, what's another small algae eater. I would try to get SAE but around my town most LFS have "chinese" or they just label them algae eaters, and I don't want to get fooled.