I need to move my tank to put in new floors I need advise

[steve]

Hey All,

Its your local rookie needing advise...again. I am puting in some new flooring at my house and need to move my 55. Here is my plan. I am going to syphon as much of the water into a large trash can one of the big ones. Once the fish start to stir the muk up I will stop with the tank water and fill the rest up with tap water I will condition the new water of course. I will try to hang my filter on the trash can. I will then take this opportunity to change my gravel out for black sand and change the river rock to holey rock. There is the plan. Now for a few questions. 1. Will my tank need to cycle again. 2. Will changing to sand take out my good bacteria I had in the garvel and mess my tank up. 3. What could I do to mess my tank up in this process. 4. What should I do take make sure this goes fine. All your help and knowledge is appreciated.

[biggin]

I changed out my substrate a few months back, it was not as hard as I had expected. Below were thing things I read and seemed to be helpful. Everything went well and the tank never missed a beat. 2 days after the change I was sitting at 0-0-0 again.

1. Is the trash can new? I use a big plastic tub from Wal-Mart or wherever, only things that go in it are fish water, fish or things that can go into the aquarium.... Basically you do not want to contaminant your fish in the trash can with the trash can. You might also want to do a light 1 part bleach to 20 or so parts water maybe more…. bleach bath in the trash can a couple days before... rinse it out 5 or so times make sure the smell of beach is gone that should kill anything in there.... I have heard letting it dry in the sun also helps…. Once the smell is gone the bleach should be.
2. Leave a little of the old substrate in the bottom center of the tank (so you do not see it) and fill over it. Also you can put some of your substrate in your filter will help with the bio load. Depending on your filter you should have a good bio load to get everything cycled quickly after the change. I am not sold on the putting substrate in the filter as the filter already has a bio load… might help might not. Also can give it a dose of cycle or bacteria supplement to help matters. I would think you could put some of the old substrate in a filter bag, pantyhose or something and hang it in the tank for a couple days and that should help.
3. Filter and or air stone would be good to add to the vessel with the while changing things.
4. It is a pain in the butt chasing fish around a dark container…. Get a flashlight.
5. Don’t drop your tank when moving it.

Good luck.

[mongo]

Steve,
Biggin gave some good advice. I would add that with the filter working properly you wont need to keep any of the old substrate. I have taken brand new tanks...filled them with water...treated for chlroine...let the temp come up and put an old "seasoned" filter on the tank and viola...new tank. The amount of bacteria on your old substrate is negligable, so getting rid of it wont hurt. As long as the filter can move twice the tank volume an hour, you wont need anything else. This has helped immensly with those...uhm...impulse buys we are all guilty of when visiting a LFS. I keep extra HOB filters going on all of my tanks all of the time. Its as easy as pie to just drop an old filter on a new tank...INSTANT CYCLING. Just make sure your temp is as close as you can get it, a couple of degrees wont hurt...but anything over five and the stress could reak havoc in the new tank.

Another trick I use is to use a butterfly net in the temporary holding vessel. You can buy some pretty big ones at most of the big chain stores. Just clamp it on the side, and put your fish in the net while you move stuff around. That way when you are ready to transfer them to the new tank, you just have to move the one net. Thats also good if you are going to spread the stock around to different tanks. That way you arent catching the wrong fish over and over. If you catch one you dont want in that tank...just drop it over the side and continue on with the hunt.

I hope that helps, and good luck on the project.

[bra8ndy8]

I use a styrophone cooler....1. you can see the fish 2. keeps the temp in the cooler better than a trash can.
Also as long as you don't do any filter changes while you are doing this....everything should be fine.....you have bacteria on the glass, hoses, filter....changing the gravel isn't a problem! Good luck on everything....and if you need any flooring advice I can help you there....my husband does that for a living!!

[fishyjoe24]

i use the rubbermaid containers and never have a problem just make sure you only use them for fish.

[AndrewH]

Yeah, most of your good bacteria live in the filter. Granted there is some in other places in your tank, but a good 75%-90% are in your filter. Keep the filter intact and let it follow the fish (in a non-toxic container), you'll be fine.

1. As long as you keep the filter happy, you won't have to re-cycle the tank.
2. Changing out the substrate will eliminate any bacteria you have growing, but it's so minimal I wouldn't worry about it (unless you have a UGF, under gravel filter, as you're primary filtration. An UGF is a completely different situation and would require some extra time and precautions).
3. There are lots of things you can do to mess it up (drop it, bleach it, pee in it), but for the most part it's pretty hard to mess it up if you take a few steps to prevent it.
4. My best suggestion would be to read up on how other people have successfully done a move over and try to do the same.

[kewlkatdady]

bleach it, pee in it

bleach would be catostrophic...

pee on the otherhand would only spike the ammo for a short period of time depending on your bio colony.:brandy:

Ask me how I know....:eek:

[mongo]

Alright Kewl...I'll bite (no pun intended ;)), how do you know pee only spikes the ammonia for a short time?