Upgrading fish tanks

[Kady]

I have a 10 gallon tank with two baby fancy goldfish in it. I want to upgrade to a 55 gallon long at the end of the month and I was wondering, while the new one is cycling, would it be beneficial in any way to use the water from my 10 gallon tank change, and put it in the new tank? thanks

note: the 10 gallon tank my fish are in has been cycling for a month and has a growth of brown algae, after doing my research I don't want to put them through all the stress of cycling a brand new tank.

 

[treemanone2003]

You should run the filter for the 55 on the 10 to help build the bb in the media. As long as the current is not too strong. Then simply add the fish, filter for the 55, ten gallons of water you have and fill with treated water. Easy peasy !!


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[Kady]

Thanks for the advice about the filter, i will certainly do that.. as far as the water, would it add ammonia if I added the other water a little at a time, or should I use something else to add the ammonia to help it cycle?

 

[treemanone2003]

My apologies as I've re read my post. The words "in addition" should have been in the first sentence. In other words, run both filters on the 10 if the current is not too strong. If you run both on the same tank, they will build up bb. Then no need to add any ammonia for cycling as it will be complete.


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[Andy Sager]

Another option would be to transfer everything from the 10 gal into the 55. ( Water, gravel, filter, fish, etc.) You will then have an instantly fully cycled aquarium. The thing you need to remember is that your tank is cycled for the existing 2 ( or however many) fish that were in the 10 gal tank. You will then need to add new fish slowly so that the bacteria bed has time to catch up to the increase in ammonia production from the new fish. Depending on how many fish you put in at one time, you may not even see any ammonia rise on a test kit. That's the nice thing about a good bacteria bed, it grows quickly. If you do see ammonia rising, you overloaded your system and will need to do water changes or use products like Seachem's PRIME to make the ammonia non toxic to the fish while the bacteria bed catches up. ( Unless the ammonia level is really high, I use the PRIME over multiple water changes.)
I am currently running 9 tanks and I only created a new bacteria bed in my first tank. All the others were seeded from the original tank's filter.

 

[Kady]

I was thinking of only keeping the two fancy goldfish. I read that they grow to be 8 inches long. I'm hoping in a 55 gallon long they can reach their full size, and be comfortable. and thanks, I didn't think that if I simply moved everything over it would be instantly cycled but I will totally do that. they love the toys they have now so i was going to stick with a similar style, and that'll just save me some money

 

[Andy Sager]

I didn't think that if I simply moved everything over it would be instantly cycled but I will totally do that.

Don't feel bad, many people don;t understand what a "cycled" tank really means.
What it means is that there are enough beneficial bacteria (nitrosomas and nitrobactors )present to convert the amount of ammonia produced by the what is present in the tank at the moment into harmless nitrates. The key is "at that moment". So if you had a cycled tank with 3 medium sized fish in it, you could replace those 3 fish with 3 similar sized fish that produce the similar amount of ammonia and would have done no change to the bacteria bed. Same applies, if you take the contents of a tank with those same 3 fish and put it all into a larger tank, you will have changed nothing as far as the bacteria bed is concerned. The bacteria bed is a living thing that grows and shrinks based on the amount of ammonia present. So if you had a tank with 50 fish in it at one time but over time, you lost 40 of those fish, the bacteria bed would shrink over time ( a short amount of time) as there will not be enough food present anymore to feed that larger bed. Adding back those 40 fish at one time would put a tremendous strain on the bacteria bed even though it was cycled before with those 50 fish. This is why you never want to add large amounts of fish at one time to a tank no matter how old it is.

I hope I didn't confuse you with all this but it is important to know when keeping fish tanks properly.

Enjoy watching your fish in their new home

 

[Kady]

That makes total sense. thanks