moved fish from 10 to 50g. Questions

If you moved the filter, with its media, you should be fine.

the more you move, the quicker it cycles. Move enough, and the tank will be cycled when you move the fish in. If you dont' like your old gravel, buy some cheap panty-hose and cut the feet off. Scoop your gravel into there, and stick them in your tank. It'll look wierd for a while, but that is a small price to pay for a quick cycle. Some people also scoop out their established filter gunk and put that on the bottom of the tank before adding the gravel or water.

As for stocking, I would first round off your school of tetras, cories, and swordtails, with a few more of each. At least 10 tetras would be nice, it'll probably make them school together. 6 cories, 4 swordtails.

Lauren said:

the more you move, the quicker it cycles. Move enough, and the tank will be cycled when you move the fish in. If you dont' like your old gravel, buy some cheap panty-hose and cut the feet off. Scoop your gravel into there, and stick them in your tank. It'll look wierd for a while, but that is a small price to pay for a quick cycle. Some people also scoop out their established filter gunk and put that on the bottom of the tank before adding the gravel or water.

Click to expand...

Intersting idea about the panty-hose. Next time I have to move tanks, I'll try that.

Oh, a question, why don't fish stores keep a sponge or two in the fish tanks to give to new owners when they buy a new tank and are just getting into the hobby so they dont have to go thu the whole cycling process?

It would cost a lot of money. They should charge people something like $1 for the sponges.

so they can make money by having misinformed or poorly informed newbies coming in to replace the fish, the cycling products and all of that.
For a centerpiece fish you could go with a single angel.

eidt: btw, what type of biowheel are you running? 2 125s or a 330 would be good. :sim: awesome!!!

I just moved from a 28 gallon to a 55 gallon. The only advice I would give is be patient with the new tank. I wanted to dump all my fish into it right away. If you can run both tanks at the same time, you should.

I set up the new tank added water, let it run for a while. Added my bio-spira, shook out my filter pads and and floated my bio wheel from my establish tank, then caught my heartiest fish and added them. I did a couple little water chages, then about 4 days later I started adding one fish at a time (I have bigger fish).

I think you should get a fews more tetras and swordtails, but for a nice cool looking fish how about a nice shark of some kind like a rainbow or red tail, they can be aggressive but dont actually seem to harm other fish just chase a little bit. Probably steer clear from balas as they tend to be a schooling fish which grow massive.

nuclearsnake said:

Intersting idea about the panty-hose. Next time I have to move tanks, I'll try that.

Oh, a question, why don't fish stores keep a sponge or two in the fish tanks to give to new owners when they buy a new tank and are just getting into the hobby so they dont have to go thu the whole cycling process?

Click to expand...

We have 25 pounds of coral in pantyhose in our african cichlid sump. Works well and are easy to rinse off when dirty. I would recommend doubling or tripling up on the pantyhose though. Once they get a run in them they fall apart quite fast.

As for the sponge idea. Most pet stores don't make as much money as you may thing off of just the fish. They make their money off of the dry goods. That's where the real money comes from. We have and continue to give customers pieces of filter floss from our systems to help out if we are asked. We also sell seeded bioballs from our salt systems at $10 a bag. $5 for dry non seeded ones. That is us however. Most stores would rather sell you crap like bio support or cycle. Bio spira is not avaliable in Canada (well at least Quebec) unless ordered online.