Moving fish to a new tank, ?'s

[Bullhead]

I'm going to be picking up a nice used 65g with stand, hood, light, top, some deco, and an Emporer400 soon. I'm going to try to start this tank off right (for once!) and cycle it properly before putting my cichlids into their new home.

My concern/question, however, is about how to NOT stress the crap out of my cichlids in doing this, since I want to use almost all the deco in their existing tank in this new one, as well as the substrate in their tank (which should help cycle the new tank faster). So, essentially my cichlids will be roaming around an empty tank, with no substrate, no rocks, just a few fake plants...... I imagine they will not be to happy about this. I have to at least steal the centerpiece of their tank, a HUGE piece of feather rock, which is their main hiding place. I've nosed around the apartment, and I don't really see anything I can stick in there as replacement "decor" for the time being. I'd go out and buy some clay pots or something, but I'm already spending more than I should on this new setup (starving college student :D ).

Any suggestions on how to minimize the stress on them, while still allowing me to get this stuff out of their tank and into the new one?

Also, I want to use a mixed substrate of Tahitian black moon sand and my current substrate (small white rock/gravel, size is between a kernel of corn and a pea). Any potential problems with this? And what's the best way to clean sand? I usually clean the gravel when bought new by rinsing it off with an old pasta strainer, works great, but the sand would go right through that.......

[2petuniasmom]

How big is your existing tank? You may be able to just make the move.

I moved from a 30 to a 55 a few months ago. I wanted to move everything across, so that is what I did. I started by putting all decorations in a bucket. I netted the fish and placed them in a 20g holding with water from their 30g tank. I moved most of the water to the 55. I scooped the gravel acreoss, set up the decorations moved the filters across and added a couple of power heads and an intank filter (any filter your switching to, of course). I netted the fish across and topped off the tank.

This tank never went back to needing to cycle. Ammonia and Nitrite stayed zero, and the water never clouded. Basically the only thing I did not move was the sludge left in the bottom of the tank after scooping the gravel out. There were enough bacterial colonies moved to handle the bio load. If you are making a large change in tank size, it may not work. Then again, if there was enough bacteria established in the existing tank and you do not increase the bio load by adding more fish right away, there would probably be enough in the larger tank. I have done this several times in the "tank tango" that goes on in my house :) It may work for you as well.

Good luck, Julie

[Bullhead]

Currently they are in a 20Long. Three cichlids (2" juveniles), 1 pleco (3"), 1 catfish (2") are the residents currently, wasn't going to add any to the tank right away (at least, I'm going to try to resist the urge:D ), not until I'm sure everything is working a ok, plus I want to get another emperor400 before adding more fish....

[Wombat]

Sand is a pain to clean haven't done it in a while I use bare bottom tanks now for that very reason, I'm lazy :) But all I used to do was fill a bucket to around half way with the sand fill it with water run my hands thru the sand then tip out excess water repeat until clean. With the new tank I would do just like 2pm stated pretty much.. I place about 100% of the volume of the old tank into the new tank (so 20g) with aged water that has Melafix and prime in it. Place all rocks caves etc in, then syphon water from old tank to new. During the syphon I transfer the fish. Then over the next week just slowly add water to fill... Hope that all made sense :rolleyes:

[skiitswitch]

Yeah - I'd just put the sand in a 5 gallon bucket, fill it with water, run my hands through, and dump out the water repeatedly until the water is clean.

[pgdark19]

if you move your substrate and decorations over to the new tank, also put your used filter media in the new emp 400. also move all the fish over at the same time too, 'cause if you move everything and not the fish....there will be nothing to produce food(ammonia) for your established bacteria to feed on and thus will die off...and you'll end up having to recycle....i say just move everything at once and you should be fine....including the old water.
--and the 5g bucket idea for cleaning the sand is the way to go. :ok: