A New Bigger Tank

A new tank! Fantastic. Best of luck with set up/cycling.
I'm looking forward to seeing pictures and hearing updates. 

Excellent! ...and, as you have a male and a female guppy, it won't be long before you're fully stocked.

Oh boy I know this all too well, in my old tank they got so inbred and twisted looking, and I ended up within a couple months with probably 100+ it was way too much to handle. Trying to control the amount that would die and discourage breeding was a hassle and now I am down to these last two in my temp tank that has been temp too long.

You can move all the fish into the new tank as soon as you are satisfied with the way it looks provided you move all the filter media into the external at the same time. That's all the media from your 20 gall and all the media from your girlfriend's tank. An external should have plenty room. If you do that you won't need to cycle it as the two lots of filter media already have enough bacteria for the fish currently in the two tanks.

However, if you want to keep either or both of the other tanks running as well, you'll need to do a fishless cycle. Using some of the media from the current tanks will speed it up. The water you moved over won't do anyhting as the bacteria we need don't live in the water, they live in the biofilm which is bound to surfaces like filter media and decor.




Have you looked on Ebay for MTS? That's the usual place to look in the UK.

You know that makes sense...because the bacterial load would be the same then. However I am waiting for the 406 to arrive in the mail, should be here tuesday/wednesday next week. Then I will do what you suggested after running it for 24 hours to stabilize the temperature.

I actually just went to a great fish store near me and they said they would sell me 12 MTS/$0.99. I ended up getting 7 for the same price because we got tired of searching but that should be fine for now and they'll multiply if needed or not most likely. I hope I can keep them under control.

The best way of keeping snails under control is by not over feeding the fish.

Snails are very useful creatures in an aquarium. They are also a good early warning system - if you ever see all the snails heading to the top of the tank during the day, test the water.

Indeed, I never had any luck with snails. They always seemed to die even though the fish were fine....however I am hoping the MTS will stay alive as I have been told how hardy they are, plus they'll help airate my sand. I am usually pretty good with feedings as well, it is just if somebody else has to feed them....


Anyway I tested the water last night:

I seem to have an awfully high pH of 7.6 :/ so I am working on correcting that with some acidic additive and neutralizer. Of course the other tank as about the same pH so I don't want to change it too much before I transfer them over next week.

I was getting 0ppm of Ammonia, 2.5-5ppm of Nitrite, and about 20ppm of Nitrate. So I suppose that means the bacteria is doing it's job so far but has some more work to do.

I have hard water (dH 17) and when I got my first starter tanks I was worried about the pH and used API Ph Down during my fishless cycle to try to remedy the situation. The whole tank went cloudy and the filter could not clear it. I ended up having to strip the tank down to cpmpletely clean it and start the cycle from the begining. I really would not recommend adjusting the pH, and there are lots of great fish for hard water that can tolerate pH up to 8 or even 8.5.
This is a link that was attached to another thread about hard water and lists some suitable fish.
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/fwsubwebindex/fwhardness.htm

Oh...well thank you I won't use chemicals then to lower the pH. I know there's plenty of fish that can handle my pH levels. There are some specific fish that cannot have that I have always wanted which was my hope in lowering it. I guess I will just have to purchase water that fits my needs one day. Maybe in a year or two when I have a more permanent place to settle down for 10+ years.


Well moving on....

The MTS are enjoying the new tank, and I have all of my live plants transferred and planted. I actually have filtration setup a week in advance and in a couple hours I am going to transfer the filter media and move the fish to their new home. The only thing I have left to do is to setup some air stones in the back of the tank but none of the stores near me had the air hose suction cups so I couldn't route the tubing exactly like I had wanted. But I can fix that later.


So a couple questions.


For the plant eaters in the tank I have been using clips previously to mount pieces of organic cucumber or zuchhini. The clips always seem to wear out, and half of the slice ends up floating to the top of the tank. Is there something else I could use that might be more effective? I used to just stab it into the gravel but of course that had the same issue.

I want to add some shrimp to my aquarium, but don't want them to get sucked through the filter. Is there any recommended attachment you know of that I could use on the fluval 406 intake so that way I don't just suck them all up if they get too close?

I have an external filter and tried using a sponge over the out-take hose and a fine mesh guard but to be honest it's a pain. My 200l tank has a lot of plants and to be honest the shrimp tend to spend most of their time in places like that where they're safe.

By plant eaters do you mean algae eaters? If that's the case it's easier to use algae pellets and use fresh courgette and spinach as treats twice a week

Well the fish transferred successfully. Woke up this morning and they all seem to be doing fine, my Pleco seems to be trying to arrange the tank, kind of? He effectively buried a rock and goes around stopping, rapidly kicks up sand to his liking and then moves somewhere else. All of the danios are swimming happily and the guppies seem okay. The female is swimming around the tank, and the male is swimming but seems to stay to the upper left side by himself. I feel bad like I need to add more guppies but I don't want a guppy explosion like I have previously had, and I'd add only males but then my poor female would get so stressed.


And so this also leads me to a couple questions I have.

In a tropical aquarium is there any need for me to test calcium and phosphate? I am going to buy the copper test and the GH/KH tests so that way I can measure those myself. Then I can use those to calculate the CO2 in the tank as well. The downside about the calcium test is it seems to measure in amount of 20PPM as it is meant more for a reef aquarium.


Regarding O2 levels, I was thinking about it and is there actually any reason for me to add air stones into my tank? I have several live plants which add oxygen, and then there's the filter water disturbance along the top that allows oxygen exchange as well.


I am also wondering if it might be a good idea for me to setup a secondary 10G-20G tank underneath my cupboard. It would have it's own small standalone filter and standalone heater. My idea was I could quickly turn it all on and get water fish ready if I needed to quarantine one fish from the others. Or if I needed a small tank to slowly adapt fish to my water conditions. My most exciting idea was I figured it could help with weekly water changes which is something I have always slacked on. If I had water in there that was heated properly and was treated for chlorine and such then I could essentially just stick a tube in, unhook the intake from my canister filter and hook up the tube for the extra tank and suck all of the water out and put it into the big tank as long as it wasn't in use.

You need to do more than 30%, change as much as possible to get that nitrite and ammonia down. Get them both down below 0.25. To get 2 ppm down to .2 ppm, you need a 90% water change. The best way might be to remove virtually all the water leaving just enough for the fish to be able to swim upright, and refill with dechlorinated water at a temperature as near the tank water as you can get it. Then test again after half an hour to let the old and new water mix. If one or both are still at or approaching 0.25, you need to do another water change.

Don't feed the fish for the next couple of days, then feed very lightly every 3rd day until ammonia and nitrite stay at zero.


What did you do, in detail? You appear to have lost some bacteria.


Since you are US based, see if you can locate a product called Dr Tim's One & Only. It's made the man who discovered the species of nitrite eaters that grow in fish tanks and is one of the few products that work, though not instantly. We can't get that in the UK so I don't know what exactly the instructions say for fish-in cycling

You need to do more than 30%, change as much as possible to get that nitrite and ammonia down. Get them both down below 0.25. To get 2 ppm down to .2 ppm, you need a 90% water change. The best way might be to remove virtually all the water leaving just enough for the fish to be able to swim upright, and refill with dechlorinated water at a temperature as near the tank water as you can get it. Then test again after half an hour to let the old and new water mix. If one or both are still at or approaching 0.25, you need to do another water change.

Don't feed the fish for the next couple of days, then feed very lightly every 3rd day until ammonia and nitrite stay at zero.


What did you do, in detail? You appear to have lost some bacteria.


Since you are US based, see if you can locate a product called Dr Tim's One & Only. It's made the man who discovered the species of nitrite eaters that grow in fish tanks and is one of the few products that work, though not instantly. We can't get that in the UK so I don't know what exactly the instructions say for fish-in cycling

Ahh okay, I am going to need to setup a side tank really quick I suppose to heat the water and dechlorinate before adding it in. I will repeat until I get to those levels.

I will also see if I can locate the Dr. Tim's one and only, the nearest store that might have it is probably an hour away.


But anyway here is what I have done since I setup the tank.

Day 0: Clean substrate, put it into the tank. Took some of the artificial plants I had that were not in a tank and rinsed them then placed them in the tank. I setup a HOB filter on the back with nothing in it and my nice fluval heater and let it run overnight.

Day 1: After reading what you said about using my existing media I realized I could probably do that. I went to the store that day to buy lights and a cover for the new tank, while I was there I also purchased a few live plants and the MTS. When I came home I acclimated the MTS to the new tank, and planted the live plants I had. I started transferring the live plants I had in my other tank and only got 1 or 2 before I had to stop to go to an emergency work call.

Day 2: This is the day I bagged up the fish in my GF's tank, I started by moving the fitlration media into my filter on the new tank and moving most of the decor into the new tank as well. Then I bagged the fish, moved them to the new tank and spent the next 30 minutes acclimating them just in case of minor water differences. After this was done I went to my house, filled a bucket half up with tank water, put the filtration media and all of my decor in there. Bagged my fish and then drove back to the new tank. I put the filtration media in the filter, than spent about 45 minutes acclimating these fish. During acclimation I placed the decor from my tank in. Once the fish were successfully acclimated I programmed my lights for when they would turn on/off and left them off for the rest of the day. About 4-6 hours later I fed the fish some flakes, a couple dried shrimp and I dropped two algae wafers into the tank. Then a few hours after that I did the first water test which was:

pH: 7.4
Ammonia: .25ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate:5 ppm

Which seemed normal to me.

Day 3: woke up and put some flakes into the water, I watched as the fish ate to see how long it took them to eat them. I slightly over fed as some of the food dropped down to the bottom of the tank after a minute. However within an hour when I was going to vacuum that up it was gone, presumable eaten by the fish or snails.

Test results this day were:
pH: 7.4
Ammonia: 0.5ppm
Nitrite: 1.0ppm
Nitrates: 10ppm

Now the nitrite levels here did scare me some and so I did not feed the fish this night, however if was late so I did not do a water change.

Day 4: I worked all day, before work I used a small pinch of fish flakes and put it into the tank, it was gone in about 10 seconds. When I came home I was exhausted but realized my guppy was missing, I found him and took him out flushing him down the toilet and passed out. The fish where not fed. It is also very possible the dead guppy was dead all day sitting in the tank.

Day 5: (today) I tested the water this morning after feeding the fish very lightly again, the food was gone in about 10 seconds. That's when I came up with the test results and then posted on the forums.

pH: 7.4 (although it seemed slightly lighter, but was still too dark to be 7.2)
Ammonia: 0.5ppm
Nitrite: 2.0ppm (it could be higher I suppose. It wasn't dark enough for the 5.0ppm mark but it did seem slightly darker than the 2.0ppm mark.
Nitrate: Was still at 10ppm.


Immediately I was worried and I made this post, and went out to buy an aqeuon aquarium water change system. 50 foot hose that hooks up directly to a faucet or outdoor hose. Easily siphons water out and lets you put water back in. I used that and before water went in I calculated I was replacing 14G out of the 55G which is about a 25.5% water change and put 5G of dechlorinator in the water, then as the water was filling up the tank I put 10G of dechlorinator in. Since then I have come back to this post to see what you suggested, I am about to test the water again and do another water change. I am going to unplug my heater so it doesn't get damaged and will report back in about an hour when I've done a large water change.