Need advise on moving my fish

[Bryan]

I've about had it. When I had my first tanks (20 years ago) I just filled them with water, then plants, waited a week then aded all the fish. Never had any die, never checked any levels.
Now everything is dieing, even my plants. This is on my second attempt the first time it was bad air conditioner causeing a over heating problem.
I'm taking my 55 down and moving to my house so I can work on it more.
I have a 20 high that has good levels except the water is a little hard. I just added some salt so that should correct itself.

Questions:

• How many inches of fish per gallon (can i fit all in 20gal)?
• How should I prevent stress (old tank levels are bad, new is good)?
• should I use some of the old water with bad levels or all new or none?
• will my kuhli loaches be OK in gravel for a while?
• what else do i need to worry about?

 

[Sasha]

Here are some answers to your questions.

1. One inch of fish per gallon of water.

2. To prevent stress, just move the fish into the new tank like they were new fish. Put them in a fish bag (the kind you get at a pet store when you get a new fish) and soak the bag in the tank to allow the temperate to adjust. I always add a cup of water into the bag every 15 minutes so the pH can adjust as well.

3. In which tank are the fish going? So, I'm not sure how to answer that question.

4. I think your kuhli loaches would be fine with gravel, but I'm not a loach expert.

Hope this helps!

 

[sylvia]

For your first question, I would suggest you post what fish you have in the 55 right now.

Just introduce them to the new tank very slowly as mentioned already.

Don't use any old water.

The khulis will be fine. They do ok on gravel so if you can change to sand later they would preffer it but don't require it. They may not like the change very much though They'll get over their resentment eventualy though I'm sure...

 

[Bryan]

I would suggest you post what fish you have in the 55 right now.

Anyway, out of 12 I have 4 neons left, out of 15 I have 6 zebra danios left, still have all 5 kuhli loaches, and all 12 white clouds are left. I'm not moving the chinese algea eaters, and I have 1 pencile fish left out of 6.

All 6 cardinals are missing, could my chinese algea eaters have gotten them, they were very small?

I'm moving them from a 55 with terrible chem levels to a 20 that has perfect levels.

I'm not sure how long after setting up the 55 at home till I put the fish back, Probably just a couple days depening on clarity. I'll use the same filter pads, and our water here is perfect right from the tap. I tested the tap water today, no chlorine, ph and alkaline were perfect, the only bad thing is the waters a little hard, but a some sea salt will remedy that.