Need advice, quickly, please...

[Foible]

OK, so we just bought a 75 gallon aquarium. Fish and all. We moved it 200 miles today, empty of course. We added new substrate and the water is still pretty cloudy. How cloudy is safe to put the fishes in? Will it hurt their gills? Coral substrate dust..... Any help welcome.
Thanks!

 

[indy]

The substrate dust isn't a problem. Putting fish into a new uncycled tank probably is. Depending on what kind of fish you've got, the odds of them making it through the cycle are pretty slim.

 

[Foible]

Is it the same as new if all the substrate, all the filter media, and about 70lbs of live rock from the established tank were kept wet and aerated? I also added biospira and am hooking it to an established refugium..

 

[Foible]

Oh, and thanks for your quick reply!

 

[Foible]

Two damsels, a tiny pseudochromis, a hawkfish, and a cleaner shrimp all previously kept in the tank. Also added about 30 more lbs of live rock just now.

 

[saberry]

What are the fish in now?

 

[Foible]

Time passed and they are now in the tank. They were in two 25 gallon rubbermaid tubs with bubblers. They seem fine, I'll keep you updated. Didn't have a lot of choice, he was tearing down the tank today whether I took it or not.

I plan to monitor the water specs closely. Seems like a reasonable bioload for the tank and I've been forced to cycle a tank quickly with biospira before (friend's tank shattered and other than the filter had to be started from scratch) with great sucess.

 

[indy]

If all the filtration was kept wet and the bacteria alive, you should be fine.

 

[Foible]

Thanks for the replies.

Everything seems fine. The refugium seems to be working nicely as a veggie filter and everything was kept wet and aerated for its entire journey. There was a tiny trace of nirtrAte this morning (yay!) but now it's undetectable. Consumed by the gallons of hungry, hungry chaetomorpha I would presume.