Upgrading From A 3ft To A 5ft - Quick Question ...

[stuhyde]

Morning peeps

Decided to upgrade tank over the holiday, and last night I bought a 5ft tank. Its hoooj and VERY heavy, very thick glass.

Now at the moment I have a 3ft tank, fully established for well over a year, water perameters perfect.

In my ultimate wisdom, I wrongly calculated that my current filter (Tetratec EX700) would be able to cope with this tank (max 250L), but now I found out my tank is about 380L. LOL.

So, I've already bought a Tetratec EX1200 (500L maximum).

What is the best proven way to transfer the beneficial bacteria from my EX700 to the EX1200? Are they the same size with the trays only a bit taller? Or are the trays inside different sizes? Anyone know?

Can I just take the carbon, sponges and other stuff and put in straight in the new filter?

Any help on this appreciated!

 

[minxfishy]

The best thing to do is to run both the filters on this 5ft tank, as its really going to need them both anyway.

So put both on the new tank, use the water from the current tank to fill as far as you can, then top up with clean water (dechlorinate), then pop all the fish in, then over the course of a few weeks, slowly up your stock.

And the trays are larger in the EX1200.


If ultimately you feel the EX1200 can cope, then after 4/5 weeks, just take the 700 off, the 1200 will have formed enough bacteria to cope with the current fish load.

 

[stuhyde]

Thanks for that, would transferring the media to the new pump not be a solution?

 

[Davo86]

Hi, sorry to say it but a EX1200 won't cope on a 380Litre tank as it only filters at around 600ish lph when full of filter media,
for a 380litre tank you ideally want to aim for a turnover of between 1500 to 1900 lph (4-5x turnover per hour)

 

[Devorax]

The best way for a quick fix is to take half of the media from the older filter and swap it for half of the new filter's media. It's called cloning, and then if the new filter isn't going to cope, run both together until you either get a filter that will cope, or if you are confident, run only the second filter and watch the water stats like a hawk. If it holds up, great, if not, run both again.
HTH

 

[minxfishy]

re: Davos post above: Yeah thats why I suggested running both of the filters together, should be able to cope - just.

 

[stuhyde]

re: Davos post above: Yeah thats why I suggested running both of the filters together, should be able to cope - just.

I made a slight mistake on the calculation of the tank

Its 5ftx1.5ftx1.5ft and I have calculated the internal volume to be bang on 330L.

I'll do the media cloning and keep an eye on the stats I think, the tank wont be fully populated either, cant afford that many fish

 

[tenohfive]

If you don't actually need the old filter the old tank and run both on the new tank, I'd do what minx suggested anyway - its easier that messing about in the trays, and shouldn't inconvenience you. And theres no such thing as too much filtration.