New Tank Setup

[Fool]

I recently purchased a 140 saltwater tank that im using as a freshwater tank. Ive scrubbed interior and exterior only thing that would not come off is the salt creep on the top four inches of the tank, apparently where the water line was. Then i filled it up with the garden hose, plugged in the filters hooked up the heaters which still havent brought it to temp. I tossed three gold fish in last night, and there doing good, but i want to add my oscars from my twenty gallon tank ASAP. There about eight inches long. when can i safely but at the soonest add my ocsars?

 

[Paavn]

before you put the gold fish in did you dechlorinate the water?
and if you put new filter media you are going to have to cycle the tank which could take a couple of weeks.

but i have been reading up on a bacterial supplement called Bio-spira, now called One and Only that adds live bacteria to your tank which would reduce the cycle time to a matter of days.

 

[Fool]

I recently purchased a 140 saltwater tank that im using as a freshwater tank. Ive scrubbed interior and exterior only thing that would not come off is the salt creep on the top four inches of the tank, apparently where the water line was. Then i filled it up with the garden hose, plugged in the filters hooked up the heaters which still havent brought it to temp. I tossed three gold fish in last night, and there doing good, but i want to add my oscars from my twenty gallon tank ASAP. There about eight inches long. when can i safely but at the soonest add my ocsars?

I also have a 55 gallon freshwater that was upstairs but i moved down stairs last week. i put my other two ocsars,catfish,16 inch pleco, red zebra cichlid,and four convict cichlids in buckets of water from there tank. Emptied there tank, moved down stairs filled up as fast as possible added gravel, filters lights and fish it wasnt 2 days later i woke up and the water was so green i couldnt see my fish. will taking gravel from my existing tanks and putting it in my new 140 gallon that has no gravel in it, make it so i can add my fish sooner?

 

[Paavn]

the gravel might help a bit. but from what those with experience say is that about 99% of the bacteria you need to break down ammonia and nitrites are in the filter media. if your filter has a floss or some other media that you can take out, you can take out about a 1/3 of it and put it into the new tank filter. it should help cycle alot faster. but remember to replace the media you took out of your other tank lol
have you taken a look at the fishless cycle thread? if you follow that along with getting some used media into your filter you should be up and running pretty soon

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, good advice from Paavn!

The only way to be sure is to have a good liquid-reagent based test kit and to understand the principles of the Nitrogen Cycle (from our pinned articles) and then to study and use the Add & Wait method in our working article on fishless cycling by rdd1952, which is also pinned up there.

Paavn has mentioned correctly that adding "mature media" from an old filter is the only sure way to speed up the process of building a working filter.

The "One and Only" product *may* be Tim Hovanec's latest product.. if so it would be quite interesting to know if anyone has any success with it! Unfortunately, the track record, even for the one or two producs (Bactinettes/BioSpira refridgerated) is only a very low percentage of anything positive at all happening and most experienced aquarists refuse to waste their money any longer on these things, after many failures.

Talking only "a couple of weeks" for fishless cycling is very, very wishful thinking. The optimistic time frame we often talk about here is 3 to 6 weeks and its not at all unusual for a beginner, without mature media, to have the process take a full two months or even longer, when mistakes are included. The most common thing that goes wrong is for the pH to crash down at 6.2 or below, causing the cycle to come to a complete halt until the situation gets remedied.

~~waterdrop~~