What to do? (your best opinion)

Put them in the 55 with a bacterial additive like cycle. Keep up with regular testing and water changes as necessary. Can you put the filter media in the filter for the 55 gallon?

You only have to cycle one tank (your first one). Move the filter media over to the new 55g. It already contains a bacteria colony that will support your goldfishes ammonia output. I went from one tank to three to eight in about six months. Never "cycled" any of them except the first. Just transfered pieces of media and started with very light stocking. The reason cyling takes soooooo long is becuase your literally starting with a couple bacteria and waiting for them to become billions and then waiting for a second species to go from a couple to billions.

Even a small amount of filter media already contains thousands of bacteria of both species.

You will lose some bacteria in the move (substrate and plants) but the majority live on the media. Our beneficial bacteria colonize oxygen rich environs (areas of high water flow) as a consequence the bacterial colonies on the filter media are waaaaay larger than those on the typical surface in your tank.

above posted while I was typing........ buy a filter bag or use the toe of an old stocking to but the gravel in, and then stuff that in your new filter "upstream" from your new media. I gaurantee you will not see any ammonia.

you can add some bio-spira just to be safe if you want to.

move the fish over, even if the tank isn't cycled, it sure is better living conditions than the 5G. the ammonia level in there is probably already high if you haven't done water changes every other day.

Jessu said:

They are blessed or something I tested a few hours ago the ammonia was .6

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that is too high, enough to cause them pain.