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if you start a siphon on the input hose to the filter then it should run. is it full of water, ready to run? like pre cycled? or do you need to clean it, set it up, fill with water, whatever...

salt at 1 g/l here causes not problems with the planted tank.

It depends. If you have a fungus problem or something - tropical area where it's hot especially - then maybe you use salt. 1 gram/litre is enough, 2 g/l max. same sort of dose for ich treatment. but if the fish are fine, don't worry.

Hmm, let's see... Inches, Gallons, and the inch/gallon rule are all obsolete :) Now.. would I keep 20 mid sized goldfish in a 100 litre tank... well no, obviously not. 6 in 200 litres is already pushing it... and they go into a pond this summer as it is.

Lets see... after 2 weeks in the goldfish tank i test under 5mg/L in metric... which is same as ppm afaik. That's 200litre with 3 comets and 3 fantails, They would average about 100mm body length not counting tails. That would be the heaviest tank load. Well maybe... The platy tank heavy as...

Hehe.. well monthly is hardly running on the edge for many tanks, certainly not in my experience, but everyone has their own opinion. I don't get readings like that on the goldfish tank, and it's bioload is way higher. And nobody is saying that all tanks only need to be changed only once a...

And old tank should be a new tank real quick with a bit of a cleanup :) maybe biomedia is a bit blocked and you have a bacteria bloom? you rinse these tho, right? ah. just reading... maybe the pleco a bit much bioload?

15ppm in a week? With one fish in a 450 litre tank? I don't get that in a 200 litre tank with 12 rainbow fish after a month. Even the goldfish aren't that bad...

hehe.. well I've been around a while as well ;) what you find is the extremes both ways on forums like this... those who change weekly and those who rarely change water. And no, you don't see a huge nitrate buildup in a month. Sure.. things have changed a lot over the 35 years or so I've been...

only if the bioload is grreater than the ability of your 'filter' (bacterial colony) to cope. By established I also mean stable. My tanks are overstocked by the standards here. bioload is handled well by the system and monthly water changes are more than enough. Want to change more often, go...

If I use media from another tank, then yeah... I get a bacteria bloom (cloudy water) for a few days, and after that it's essentially over and more or less cycled... tho it can take a while longer to really settle down.

May not be cycled... best course of action at this stage is likely to be 50% wc 3 times per week until it is settled and more established. you need to test for ammonia and nitrite at this stage to check those levels.

25-50% per month is enough in a established tank. More often doesn't matter. testing isn't a big issue on established tank, but again doesn't hurt to check, esp is something doesn't look right, like if it's cloudy. I vac what i can in the planted tanks and lights stay on... fish don't worry much.

goldfish will eat all plants... yep.. that would be the biggest issue. I weed out the wisteria from my planted tank and put it in the goldfish. they like their salad. they will chew the anubias up eventually as well. Unfortunately plants and goldfish don't mix.

i'd be checking perameters and such. what sort of filtration you have? are you fully cycled? And establish tank doesn't get dirty... you can stir them up all you want and they clear the next day with reasonable filtration.

The downside of plants. Once you have plants in a tank any non-planted tank looks really really empty :) The goldfish tank looks like a desert compared to the community tank. Must plant the rainbowfish tank now, but first need more light.

Well, with the gravel starter the tank might cycle in a good time. I'd suggest a 25% water change every day or two for a while until the tank settles. I'd just use the main filter, although it may not be quite big enough. It would be for 'normal' fish, but you may need more for goldfish.

I do use salt. I'm in a hot tropical area and without salt I have an instant fungal problem. But with salt you need to keep the concentration consistent. If you do a PWC then you add the amount of salt needed for that amount of new water. You can't do a PWC every 4 days and then arbitrarily add...

Well, I always put fish in the new tank, but then it's been a while since I cycled a tank from scratch. I have multiple tanks and if I start a new one then I move in a lot of material - gravel, biomedia - and just have a minicycle with a lowish fish load... Back when I started with a new first...

I hope nobody thinks I'm against cleaning the tank. Certainly not my view at all. I just think comparing fish to people is not productive. Unless we would like the idea of keeping captive slaves in little prisons. Fish are fish, not people, and they thrive in relatively cramped conditions that...

My point is that we are talking about a bigger mini-ecosystem than a room. It's not quite a stadium, but if you care to work out the ratios then you can see a tank is worth several houses. Fish do tend to get around and congregate in their environment, and so they do see each other a lot. People...

Before leaving this I suppose I should look at getting a little closer to a comparison. Imagine 10 people. They can float in a space that is 30m (100ft) long, 15m wide (50ft), and 15m (50ft) deep. It's quite a big space, sorta like fish in a tank, and equal to the volume of several houses. Clean...

Nope. you have to find them a lake if you want them truly happy :) You don't need to be like that. We all know cleaning is a good thing, but if you want to compare to a human situation then you need to have a larger 'tank' to put the people in for a more realistic comparison. Did I say don't...

Yes, exactly. The fish come from rivers and lakes. They don't live in a room regardless of how often you clean it. No matter what you do it will still be a tiny little room as far as the fish are concerned. So the comparison is immediately skewed. Fish do not naturally live in a tank. For...

Actually I got threads crossed a bit there and thought this was an overcrowding thread :) But even so, comparisons between tanks and rooms of people aren't great. Tanks do have water treatment systems that do remove most waste, so in the short term (months) there is no comparison.