Upgrading A Tank

[barrygilbert]

Does anyone have any advice on the following?
I have a small tank and have acquired a tank three times larger.
I do not want to run two tanks but simply move everything into the bigger tank.
How do I do it, especially setting up the new tank and moving the fish in?
Can I use the old water as a starter?

 

[Arimus]

Just done something similiar...

I changed half the filter media in the old tank and put it in the new tank then ran both tanks for a while. Once the water in the new tank was showing ammonia was cycling in about 12 hours I moved the fish...

I moved them the same way I would introduce new fish, using one of the fintro things maidenhead aquatics sell, and only moved a few fish at a time... all in all I had my inmates split across two tanks for about 2 days until all moved into their new tank.

 

[barrygilbert]

Just done something similiar...

I changed half the filter media in the old tank and put it in the new tank then ran both tanks for a while. Once the water in the new tank was showing ammonia was cycling in about 12 hours I moved the fish...

I moved them the same way I would introduce new fish, using one of the fintro things maidenhead aquatics sell, and only moved a few fish at a time... all in all I had my inmates split across two tanks for about 2 days until all moved into their new tank.

Thanks - I'll try that

 

[donna123]

i upgraded a 180ltr to a 260ltr in a few hrs.
i bought a huge plastic tub filled with half the tank water, put in the fish and plants, then saved as much of the water in buckets
as i could, took out gravel etc, moved new tank into place (with help) lol put in spare water gravel, then toped up with treated water, saving room for the water that was holding the fish, added fish toped up with saved water and cloned the filter media from 180ltr .

 

[Arimus]

I couldn't reuse all the media as I'd gone from a 60l to a 270l tank - internal filter (fluval 2+) to an external 305 filter... and the wife took over the 60l tank so my move was complicated by having to keep the old tank operational as well.

We've now got a 21l tank for our Betta, a 60l for my wife's guppies with a couple of platy's and mollies and my 270l for the rest....

 

[loachman]

Easiest way is to set up the new tank with decholinated water and get the temperature right. You may need a couple days to let the substrate dust settle, etc.

When it looks good, take the wet filter (or wet filter media) and fish from the small, old tank and put all of it into the new tank. Just do the normal fish acclimation procedure. You can run 2 filters on the new tank for a couple weeks if it's not easy to put the old filter media into the new tank's filter.

The old tank's filter will supply all of the bacteria needed to cope with the current fishload. After a couple weeks you can slowly add additional fish.

The only benefit of moving the water over is just so that the water parameters are similar so stress on the fish is a little less (but only 1/3 of the water max is "old" and if you keep up with water changes it should be similar to tap water anyway.)