Setting Up New Large Tank

[Aquatious]

Hi,

I've bought a lovely 6x2x2.5 tank from a member of these forums (you may recognise it!). After an "interesting" experience transporting it I've got it mostly set up:

I washed 80kg of Argos play sand by hand using a pillow under the tap - that took quite a while. I filled the tank and treated it with Nutrafin AquaPlus to get rid of the chlorine and other nasties. I've put in a load of bogwood etc and most of it is just about sinking - but don't worry about the placement of it all - I'm a long way off interior decorating. Two heaters have got the water temperature up to 77 degrees.

I've got two filters up and running - an EFX 600 and a Fluval FX5. I've taken a good deal of the chip substrate from the filter in my existing mature tank and swapped it for the substrate in the EFX as it has a layer with the same chips in it. I've also put in a dose of Interpet Filter Start which is apparently "bacteria in a bottle" to give it a bit of a boost. I'm hoping that will start the bacterial colonisation moving fairly quickly.

My existing tank is a bit packed at the moment (some fish that I wanted for the tank came up for sale), and one of the main bunch of hooligans that I want to transfer eventually will be my horde of silver dollars. I've read that silver dollars are hardy and good candidates for putting in first, so I've put a couple in the tank to start making waste to feed the nitrogen cycle. They look chilled and healthy so I'm hoping they are happy! I'll see if they feed tonight.

From my reading on the forum, it looks like I need about 56" of fish to start cycling with (224 US gallons / 4). The dollars are about 4-5" so that would mean putting 11 of them in! Is that going overboard and being risky or should I stick to a couple and put a few more in on a regular basis say 2 a week for 6 weeks?

I'm planning on daily testing with liquid tests for ph, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. As the forum says, I'll do large water changes when the nitrites hit 0.25. This will of course be a pain in the neck as the tank is so huge. Whilst it is easy to get the water out (siphon to flower bed), and relatively easy to put it back in again (I'm all hosed up from the mixer tap), keeping the temperature stable will be tricky. Any tips?

Thanks in advance,
Matt

 

[CezzaXV]

Tbh, I'd be looking to do fishless cycling. Not only is it kinder to the fish, I wouldn't want to be doing daily 90% water changes on a tank that size!

 

[Ferg1985]

Beautiful tank (looks like an ND Aquatics custom made tank??) I'd have loved to have had mine that size

You have the benefit of having the established tank, I'd be taking the dirty media from that and giving it a good clean within the clean tank water, get some of that dirty waste circulating in the tank and kick start the filters (I'd do that without having the Silver Dollars in, mind). When I set up my 5 foot tank up I bought a little bottle of household ammonia from Homebase (wasn't very expensive) and just dosed it as appropriate for 2 weeks.

After the 2 weeks I put in 4 koi (as I hadn't bought my lighting units or heaters) so I suppose you could say I did a half fishless cylce it did no harm though, never had any ammonia or nitrite spikes and within a month or two of having the koi in they then went to live in my brother's pond and I start slowly stocking the tank with tropicals.

 

[Aquatious]

I must have misread something - I could have sworn it was 10% water changes daily which I could have coped with!

Thanks for the advice chaps. I guess I'll put the dollars back in the old tank again and make a trip to Homebase…

I did some quick tests to check there's nothing odd in the tank! Everything looks sensible I think.
pH reads 7.4 (although strangely the chart on my tester doesn't go lower than that, so I'll probably find another test).
Nitrites 0
Nitrates trace from the tap water
Ammonia 0

Is it me or is it really hard trying to compare the colour in the test tubes to the bits of card?

Ahem sorry nitrates 12.5 - read the wrong tube. Going to do one on tap water and see if that is where it has come from...

 

[CezzaXV]

It is really hard to compare the colours, but I like to look at the results this way - ammonia and nitrite are either zero or not zero, and nitrate is either yellow, orange or red!

 

[Aquatious]

Hah - I like it

The nitrate in the tank is definitely orange not yellow. And the results are in - the tap water is the same.

 

[The Taffy Apple]

Just move more (if possible) mature media across from your existing filter, continue with a fishless cycle for a week or so, monitor your test results then hey presto. You seem to be lucky enough to be in the position of not having to risk the health of your fish to possible Ammonia and NitrItes in an uncycled tank here, i think you should use this positon to your advantage.

Terry.

 

[Aquatious]

Is it just filter media I should move over or will rocks/gravel/bogwood help at all? How much can I move without screwing up the original tank ?

 

[The Taffy Apple]

Try and judge what size filter would safely support the bio-load of the fish that you wish to move across.The amount of media you would then need would fill that filter, you could then add possibly smaller 'donations' across by adding less fish and following what i recommended above.
Unfortunately you are talking about fish alot bigger than what i have, but the theory would be the same.

Terry.

 

[CezzaXV]

The generally accepted guideline around here is that you can safely remove (and replace) a third of the media from an established filter without having much of an effect. It's then possible, in theory, to stock the new tank with a third of the fish that the original tank holds. From there you can build it up gradually. I'd be very conservative with that though.

 

[Aquatious]

That's interesting - my fish shop said the same, why is why I was considering putting some fish in straight away. I think I'll move some more filter material across and put a couple more fish in, monitoring closely with a view to whipping them out if I see any nitrates coming through - in which case I'll get the ammonia and get working on fishless cycling.

On a separate note the dollars look much more relaxed in the big tank

 

[The Taffy Apple]

That's interesting - my fish shop said the same, why is why I was considering putting some fish in straight away. I think I'll move some more filter material across and put a couple more fish in, monitoring closely with a view to whipping them out if I see any nitrates coming through - in which case I'll get the ammonia and get working on fishless cycling.

On a separate note the dollars look much more relaxed in the big tank

Unless the Dollars are extremely fragile to NitrAtes, then i wouldn't worry too much about them causing any ill effect.. in fact, a continuous trace of NitrAtes (and rising NitrAtes even more so) are a good sign that your cycle is doing what it should. Just keep an eye on that Ammonia and NitrItes.

Terry.

 

[Aquatious]

Bah I think that might have been autocorrect - I meant nitrites thanks muchly.

 

[Aquatious]

Got 4 dollars in there now - they are moving about together and look calm - although they didn't seem interested in any food last night. I transfered a third of my filter media from the second tank into the second filter on the new tank (the first filter has already had a donation), and poured all the lovely yucky water from the filter into it. No ammonia or nitrite yet but will be watching them like a hawk At least with this hot weather and warmer water than normal the bacteria should grow a bit quicker!

 

[Prime Ordeal]

The generally accepted guideline around here is that you can safely remove (and replace) a third of the media from an established filter without having much of an effect. It's then possible, in theory, to stock the new tank with a third of the fish that the original tank holds. From there you can build it up gradually. I'd be very conservative with that though.

I'd be quite conservative with it. Plants, and bacteria in the substrate and other tank surfaces, make up a good bit of the overall tank's nitrogen eating ability, so if you take a third of media I would stock for no more than a quarter of the current fish load in the new tank.