Moving Fish To A Bigger Tank

[offspring]

I am an old newby and have a medium sized tank with everything running smoothly (help from this site!).

Like most people on this site, who enjoy the hobby, I now want to buy a bigger tank and move my stock and plants over to the larger tank, but I do not want two tanks. I have fish that are generally non-breeders in a community tank e.g. neons, glo lights, danios in other words nothing fancy but I love them.

Do I have to set up the new tank and keep the original going while the new tank cycles, or is there a short cut seeing I have an old tank up an running. I suppose what I am really asking is can I move everything after about a day or so using a lot of the water from the old tank?

Thanks

 

[emma12321]

so long as you have a filter thats not under gravel you could do the move in a day and leave the old filter running alongside the new one for a month until the new one is seeded with good bacteria, or move the old filter media into the new filter.

Emma

 

[offspring]

so long as you have a filter thats not under gravel you could do the move in a day and leave the old filter running alongside the new one for a month until the new one is seeded with good bacteria, or move the old filter media into the new filter.

Emma

 

[Elaine2]

Unless you are making a vast leap in tank size, moving everything in one go works fine. As Emma mentioned, keep the old filter running in the new tank for a while - last time my fish shifted (3 ft tank to 5ft tank) I kept the old filter running for a few months and also shifted some of the sponge from it into the new filter. Different people have different methods but I put all of the water that I could keep into large plastic containers and added the heaters and filters. The larger fish went in without bags and the smaller ones with bags. I then removed the old tank, positioned the new one, added the gravel then started moving the water, plants, wood and fish into it along with the filters and heaters. Finally, top up the water as you would when doing a water change. I kept a close eye on the water stats for a few weeks as well but had no problems.

 

[fett999]

I did pretty much the same as Elaine2 just before Christmas when upgrading from my 48l to my 106l and had no problems at all. I still have the old filter running alongside the new one at the moment and I might leave it that way for now because I just got the greenlight from my wife to have the old tank up and running as well as the new. By running the two filters together you're basically cloning your' filter thus cutting out the cycle.

 

[offspring]

I did pretty much the same as Elaine2 just before Christmas when upgrading from my 48l to my 106l and had no problems at all. I still have the old filter running alongside the new one at the moment and I might leave it that way for now because I just got the greenlight from my wife to have the old tank up and running as well as the new. By running the two filters together you're basically cloning your' filter thus cutting out the cycle.

Thanks to everyone, as soon as the weather improves and I can feel safe carrying a new tank from my car up the path, I'm off to treat myself with my Christmas money.