I have a 55g and today while in petsmart I bought a 125g at a great price now my question is what is the easiest way to transfer fish to new tank should I transfer water? Or just start over? I plan to just buy some rocks from lowes to use as gravel. I'm thinking of building a sump not sure as this is fresh water any suggestions?
Bought a new 125g tank now what?
- Thread starter Lumbee4live
- Start date
I use to have a 55 gallon and went to a 125 gallon as well.If you already have fishes in the 55 gallon,take at least 25% of the water from the 55 gallon or if you didn't clean the tank today,you can take at least 30 to 40% of the water then,also what powerfilters or canister are you running?What I did to process the cycling quicker,was taking my penguin 350 that already established the good bacteria and left my canister running on the 55 gallon with my cichlids still.I put my cichlids in and not a single one is effective by it at all.I do recommend another heater though,even though you can run a powerhead to circulate the water,it still may not reach the other end at all.If that tank came with a undergravel filter,don't even bother running that hunk of junk 20+ year old technology for the fishes.No reason to have,if you can run a good canister and powerfilter.
If your 55gal is mature and healthy, what about an instant cycling for the 125?
First remove all fish you want to move into the 125 and place them in another bucket with an airstone. Empty as much as you can the 55. Remove at least a third of its substrate and place it in the 125. Refill your 55.
Add water by placing a somewhat flat surface to disperse water impact to minimize unsettling the substrate (if using chlorinated tap water add the dechlorinator/heavy metal conditioner simultaneously with the first splash of water).
Once the 125 is filled install the filter and place at least half of the seeded media form the filter of the 55 and let it run for a while so the cloudy water clears significantly, transfer the fish (acclimate if neccessary). Place unseeded media in both filters so they can be colonized.
It would be a good idea to plant as much live plants as possible if the fish species you keep can be kept with plants (some are no-no: e.g. Silver Dollars, Oscar...) making sure you can provide within range temperature, pH and GH to the plants if possible.
Pepetj
Santo Domingo
First remove all fish you want to move into the 125 and place them in another bucket with an airstone. Empty as much as you can the 55. Remove at least a third of its substrate and place it in the 125. Refill your 55.
Add water by placing a somewhat flat surface to disperse water impact to minimize unsettling the substrate (if using chlorinated tap water add the dechlorinator/heavy metal conditioner simultaneously with the first splash of water).
Once the 125 is filled install the filter and place at least half of the seeded media form the filter of the 55 and let it run for a while so the cloudy water clears significantly, transfer the fish (acclimate if neccessary). Place unseeded media in both filters so they can be colonized.
It would be a good idea to plant as much live plants as possible if the fish species you keep can be kept with plants (some are no-no: e.g. Silver Dollars, Oscar...) making sure you can provide within range temperature, pH and GH to the plants if possible.
Pepetj
Santo Domingo
Ok I have two aquaclear 70 currently on the 55gal. I plan to use them on the 125gal into I decide on either a canister or sump. The tank will primary be a oscar tank which is why I'm thinking of doing a sump because of the high surface area and more media because they are messey. I planned to hook the undergravel that came with the tank to one of the aqua clear why shouldn't I use it??
Lumbee4live;4942135; said:
I use to have one running on my 55 gallon,I just didn't find it useful,it felt like i had to clean it more often,then my canister.Since I don't even bother using those anymore,I am just running 2 penguin 350s and the magnum 350 for my 125 gallon set up.Works perfectly fine with what I have set up on the tank.As for the sump,it could cost probable 300 dollars for you do,I could be wrong though on that.
The one petsmart by me has a 120 gallon tank,which is a foot shorter than a 125 gallon,but I never seen a 125 there before.I luckily found mine on craigslist for 350.I was able to have extra spending cash for some new equipment,ect.
for a 120 gallon with stand at petsmart is about 600 something dollars,so to me I got the better deal either way.Besides that majority of people on craigslist are nuts with their pricing on used tanks,55 gallons for 400 dollars,like they will get their money back from spending that much.Value on tanks and items don't increase in value or stay the same,they decrease like anything else in the market for items.
When buying used anything more than $1/gallon for the tank is generally way too much at least here in SoCal.