Thinking Of Upgrading...

[Torred1771]

Ive got a chance to buy a nice 220 litre tank which i would upgrade to from my 90L.

How would I go about upgrading as I would be adding more water than is currently in the tank, it would be like a 100% water change!

Also, would changing my substrate hurt anything?

How stressful is it for my fish as I dont want to lose any of them...

Thanks in advance!

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Don't worry about the water from the old tank, you don't need it anyway. Just set up the new tank fill with dechlorinated water, get the water up to temperature. Move your filter/filter media over to the new tank/filter and add fish. If you need to take anything from your old tank, like substrate, then you'll need to remove the fish into buckets first. They will be fine for a few hours in buckets. Same goes for plants, remove them and put them in the new tank first, you won't want to be messing around in there right after to add the fish as they will need some time to settle in AND it's way harder to catch the fish if there's ornaments in the tank.

Hope that helps!

 

[Torred1771]

Its going to be a bit more difficult than that, as my new tank will be going in the same spot as the old one. I will transfer everything from the tank across including water to make it as less stressful for the fish as possible.

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

I promise you the water makes not one bit of difference to your fish and since you've got to put the tank in place of the old one, keeping it just makes it more difficult actually.

Catch the fish, put them in buckets, empty the old tank. Put the new one in it's place. Decorate, fill, etc. etc. That's my opinion!

I wouldn't even keep any of the water from the buckets the fish are being stored in because they will have ammonia from the fish being in them while you sort out the new tank. It may not be enough to matter, just depends on your fish but if it were me, I wouldn't bother

 

[Torred1771]

We will see what happens, may not happen now as my other half is kicking off about it...

 

[LucyB]

You don't need the water, it's the filter media you need. There's no such thing as a too big water change!

 

[Torred1771]

Well, its back on. We managed to sort it out. I'm picking up my AquaOne Regency 180L on Wednesday night. Really looking forward to it!

 

[Flute]

Great news Upgrading is always fun ^^

As the others have said, you don't need to keep your old tank water unless it has a different pH to your tap water (for example if you've used almond leaves to drop the pH), otherwise, it's the filter and substrate that's more important to move. If you want to change your substrate for the new tank though it shouldn't effect things too much as long as you keep your filter media wet.

I changed tanks a couple of months ago in the same way you're going to do it, and I didn't bother to keep any of the old tank water. Didn't loose a single fish.

Make sure you have something to cover the buckets with, just in case fish start to jump from stress.