Media For A New Tank

[bonez]

Hi Guys & Girls,

My new tank finally arrives next week and I am looking at replacing the media in my old tank and putting the old media in the new tank to help it cycle. My question is if you’re not meant to wash out your media in tap water wouldn’t the new water in the tank kill the friendly’s living in the media?

I am also looking at maybe transferring all the water and fish from my old tank into the new one. The old one being 170 Litres (45 US gallons) and the new one being 340 litres (90us gallons). The only new thing in the tank will be gravel and heater most of my old tank will be moving across. Do you think it will be ok to just top up the new tank and monitor the levels ect as it practically a 50% water change or should I let the new tank cycle before moving the fish

Oh my wife has also decided she wants to keep the 170 litre tank but she wants to put gold fish in it how can I get her to stick with tropical’s or even saltwater (This would be a new thing) not that I have anything against goldfish but there water is to cold and my musicales contract really bad in cold water that’s why I stick to warmer water. The wife wont clean the tanks she says she dos not want to get contaminated

Any help you be great

 

[three-fingers]

Shouldn't kill the bacteria as the water in the new tank should have very nearly the same stats as your existing tank...if the water is from the same tap and you used dechlorinator in it.

 

[OldMan47]

Your first assumption was correct Bonez. If you move everything over and then top off with dechlorinated water it would be like doing a large partial water change and things should go forward as if nothing happened. I will not be drawn into a domestic situation because it could cause me more trouble at home. If you have moved everything over, you will need to decide how to go about setting up the old tank to have a cycled filter. Maybe cloning the one that got moved over would work or if you have a nice big new filter, you could move the old one back after a few weeks of running both filters together on the same tank. If you are going over to salt, I think you will find that a salt tank does not use freshwater bacteria, but I don't really know.