Upgrade!

[adadkins1]

Finally upping my 10g to a 20g and have a question. What do you do with the fish in the old tank while setting up the new one? The new aquarium will be put in the same spot so I couldn't just leave the old one running.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Fishkeeper26]

IMO you need a plan to cycle the 20 first. Are you gonna use the same gravel and filter?

 

[jsoong]

Well, if you are brave, you can remove 1/2 or more of the water in the 10, then move it carefully to a new spot (with the fish in it), and set up your 20 in the new spot. It is a bit risky as the sloshing water in the 10 may break the glass or loosen a seam & cause a leak. <or you can plain drop the tank in the move!> With just 4 or so gal of water left, it weighs 30 or 40 lbs, so the risk is not too high & I have personally done it without incident.

A safer way is to use buckets as a temp. tank. Set up the largest clean (preferable unused so there is no risk of soaps or other residue) rubbermaid tub or buckets is a convenient spot. If you are contemplating a long time setting up the new tank, you would want something big, like 10+ gal. You can crowd the fish for a short (say a couple hrs.) while if your new setup is fast. Move the fish one a a time to the new bucket. <I avoid stressing the fish so I catch the fish in a small container with water rather than nets so the fish is never out of water.> After all the fish is moved, move your heater & filter to the bucket & run those. It is important to keep the filter running so you don't lose the biofilter.

If the bucket is too small to run the filter, you can use an airstone in the bucket as a temporary measure, but you will need to keep the filter media wet in a container of dechlorinated water. You can use this temp setup for a few hours while you set up the new tank. If you have a big bucket with filter running, you can take all the time you need to setup the new tank. <I have done that for a week in a slow setup .>

Once the new tank is setup, move the fish back. Be sure to move the filter & run it in the new tank (in addition to any new filter you plan to run) for a few weeks to seed the new tank so you won't have to cycle it. You would want to still check levels & do pwc if needed for the first week or 2, but if you preserve your biofilter & move it to the new setup, you should not see any spikes at all.

 

[jsoong]

IMO you need a plan to cycle the 20 first. Are you gonna use the same gravel and filter?

You do not need to cycle a new tank if you are willing to transfer the biofilter. The safest is to transfer all the substrate & decorations and the filter. But you can do that with just the filter alone if it is well seeded. <I.e., don't do this right after you change the filter pads.> If you are not reusing the substrate (gravel), you can put it in a mesh bag & put it in the new tank during the transfer, and remove it after a few weeks. <Generally, you only need the top half of the gravel.>

It is important to keep all the media wet in dechlorinated water during the transfer, and aerate the water if you are going to take a long time. If you are going to take more than a day, you would need to feed the biofilter either by running it in a temp tank with fish (as I suggested earlier), or add ammonia to the aerated water containing the biomedia.

 

[Fishkeeper26]

You do not need to cycle a new tank if you are willing to transfer the biofilter. The safest is to transfer all the substrate & decorations and the filter. But you can do that with just the filter alone if it is well seeded. <I.e., don't do this right after you change the filter pads.> If you are not reusing the substrate (gravel), you can put it in a mesh bag & put it in the new tank during the transfer, and remove it after a few weeks. <Generally, you only need the top half of the gravel.>

It is important to keep all the media wet in dechlorinated water during the transfer, and aerate the water if you are going to take a long time. If you are going to take more than a day, you would need to feed the biofilter either by running it in a temp tank with fish (as I suggested earlier), or add ammonia to the aerated water containing the biomedia.

That's why asked if he was transferring the filter and gravel

 

[adadkins1]

Well, I just transfered all of the fish into a large container and then emptied then 10g. After that I put the 20g up and filled the filter up with the media I had kept wet. I also put in the gravel from the old tank. Hopefully this will instantly cycle my tank and I will be set.

 

[Fishkeeper26]

You should be good then

 

[adadkins1]

Mini-cycle!

Ahhhh! This is exactly what I didn't want to happen. Woke up and looked in the tank, everything was healthy, but the thing that caught my attention was a couple of my Glowlights' colors just weren't as brilliant as they normally were. I went ahead and tested params. as I had planned. My ammonia is about .25ppm and nitrite is still at 0ppm. How long do mini-cycles normally last? Can I do anything except frequent PWC's to keep ammonia/nitrite down?

I have also been watching my ghost shrimp really closely since they are the proverbial "canary in the mine shaft" when it comes to ammonia/nitrite problems.

 

[Fishkeeper26]

IMO I would test the water a few times a day and do pwc's as they're needed

 

[adadkins1]

I just did a 15% PWC and it brought levels down a shade, so I will continue to test and do PWC's accordingly. I am just trying not to cause any unneeded stress.

 

[jsoong]

0.25 is not bad at all. If you transferred the bulk of your bio-media, you would prob not see much of a mini-cycle. When I moved from 10 to 60, I had only trace levels for 2 or 3 days. Nothing a pwc or 2 didn't fix.

 

[adadkins1]

Thank you very much for the reassurance. I did a PWC after getting the reading and then tested later this evening. The ammonia looked like it had actually gone down considering I only did a 10% water change.