Help- tank broke, fish survived. Cycling new tank

[Kataobbe]

Hi all-

Newbie here, so I'm not entirely certain where this thread belongs. If there's a better subforum (getting started? Unhealthy fish?) Let me know and I'll move it.

I had a 10 gallon established tank with plants and fish (my first tank), but it just broke yesterday while I was moving. Never let other people near your fish!

Fortunately I had my fish in ziplocks, so they survived along with my filter material, and I had a gallon of tank water in a carton to help fill the tank at my new house. But the gravel was toast due to the glass shards, so I lost a lot of my bacteria

So I'm trying to cycle a new tank/gravel and keep my old fish alive (2 1.5" catfish and a 3" goldfish) along with the sole surviving plant. I've never done fish-in cycling before--how do I keep the bad bacteria from killing off my fish?

The tank:

My ammonia levels were at 1ppm, my nitrites were at 0.5ppm, and my nitrates were at 10 - 20 ppm when I just tested it, so I did a 50% water change. I've added API stress coat and the Tetra EasyBalance stabilizer for pH/nitrate/phosphate. I have no idea if that's helpful, but it didn't seem like it would hurt.

I have a non programmable heater that's keeping the tank at 79 degrees F

Other than daily water changes to keep the ammonia/nitrite down, is there anything I can do to help my fish survive the cycling process?

Thanks for any help!

 

[nirbhao]

The good news is that your filter media has a lot of the beneficial bacteria.

The bad news is that your goldfish is an ammonia machine, so it would be very difficult for even an established tank to keep up with it.

So, um.... Welcome to the forum?

 

[Kataobbe]

Ha, thanks!

He's not so bad, my old bacterial community was excellent at keeping the ammonia at 0 & the plants ate the nitrate happily. I just have to get the tank back to that state [emoji26]

I'm resigned to daily water changes at this point, I just hope that the stress from all of the water changes doesn't kill my catfish, the poor dears had enough of a shock falling onto the floor when the tank broke.

The good news is that your filter media has a lot of the beneficial bacteria.

The bad news is that your goldfish is an ammonia machine, so it would be very difficult for even an established tank to keep up with it.

So, um.... Welcome to the forum?

 

[nirbhao]

Breaking tanks are pretty much my nightmare. Broken glass and panicked critters. All bad.

 

[Kataobbe]

Breaking tanks are pretty much my nightmare. Broken glass and panicked critters. All bad.

I can confirm. The glass actually pierced the fish bags, so I am also paranoid that there's a wound on my fish somewhere I can't see. The color of my catfish was awful by the time I got them into my new tank. They've thankfully bounced back, but one is still a little more red in the head than I'd like

The goldfish was fine, the stinker. Tiny 33 cent feeder goldfish I got as a gift from a friend to "help with the cycling process" of my first tank. Now a shiny giant fat goldfish who steals food from my poor little catfish & keeps me up at night by dropping gravel from the top of the tank for a nice "Clink. Clink. Clink" at 3am

 

[nirbhao]

Fish have such personalities!

 

[Kwakatoo]

Sounds like you're onto it! Welcome to the site! My only thought, and I may be corrected by those with more experience, is that temp is really warm for the goldfish, but right for the catfish. I guess cater for the catfish, goldie sounds like he might be pretty hardy!

 

[SherLar]

Goldfish can safely handle temps from near-freezing to the high 80s F. He'll be fine as long as there are no drastic or fast temp changes.
THe bad news is that a 10g tank won't be large enough for him for long.