No, not necessarily. It's tricky, but if you can keep the bacteria in the gravel and water alive long enough, most of them will just continue to thrive in the new tank.
Hit yourself over the head with it for wasting money! No, seriously, you can use it as a breeder tank for any baby fish you may have or you can use it as a medical tank for sick fish so their sickness doesn't contaminate healthy fish. Not to mention so you don't medicate fish that don't need the medication. You can put a small turtle in it and you'll have a terrarium!
No. It will be cloudy for a while. And having a lot of filtration can make that clear up quicker. You just do everything quickly. DON'T move all that stuff IN your tank... you'll bust the seams or drop it or worse. (I'm sure there's worse!) It may be cloudy for some days. Just depends. Get really large plastic bags from fish shops for your fish. Double bag them. It doesn't hurt to keep as much of your tank water as you reasonably can, but it's not necessary. There are products you can put in bags of fish when your transporting. (one I used to use, a powder that gave the water a bluish tink and provided oxygen beyond what the bag and water held, worked well, but the name escapes me) I noticed Jungle makes something called Bag Buddies that is a simple tablet you drop in the bag before you ship it or have the fish in there a long time. You can have a couple of smaller tanks set up where you're moving to just to "park" your fish. If you don't have that, some clean buckets with the right water conditions and temperature, with air-stones bubbling in them, can work fine while your moving and setting up. Make sure you slowly add water from you new tank to the bagged fish to equalize the temperature and stuff. Take your time before putting them in the tank. They'll thank you for it. Check again if you really do this, otherwise we're going to give you more info than you'll need and you'll ask again when you do it. It's not hard. I moved a 135 gal. tank and about 75-80 fish from Houston to my house in Austin in a day and didn't lose more than a couple. The ones I lost were 3" Congo Tetras who jumped out of the tank because someone helping me forgot to put the cover on before leaving. (the fish were excited and i was not happy when I realized what had happened!) Moving a tank like that and that many fish to another city was a major undertaking, but the reason I said it wasn't hard was that it was all logistics. It wasn't rocket science. Doing it in the same city would be much easier. What I still have in my garage is a 30+ gal. plastic garbage can on wheels and a submersible pump I used to mix up my water (condition it) before putting it in the tank. I used to pump the water out of the tank with the pump (like you would use on a decorative fountain, for example) just out a window into the yard/flowerbed or into a sink or the garbage can if I was just doing a water change and roll it to where I could pump it out. Then I would put water the right temperature into the garbage can from the faucet, mix in some stuff so the water was groovy, set the pump in there a while to really mix it up, and then pump it into the tank. Easy. (it took me years to figure out that this was the way to go with my big tanks. what took forever, it seemed, suddenly took a short time) And on actually moving the tank, what DoD said. Have some help if it's big. And like he said, there's lot of uses for 10 gallon tanks. edit: if you have a garbage can with a heater and air stones in it with the water mixed up close to where your putting your tank, then you can pump/siphon that water into it after it's set up and hopefully "save" your bacteria in the gravel and what not. I've done it.
ok Hardy fish ... get Rainbow fish......if your water is in good nick then Clown Loaches are very hardy, especially once the settle in and take ownership of the tank now changing/upgrading tanks.... i know all about this..... my old tank was in the same spot as the new one had to empty the old one... you pretty much can't move it till it is empty... damn water is heavy so emptied the tank and kept all the water in containers and large esky.... in these i also put my fish and filters, air and heaters..... then put the new tank in place and started putting in the gravel and then some of the old water and also some new water.... once i added about 20cm of water a i then added logs and plants.... it got cloudy as buggery then, let it settle and then continued to fill, let it settle more and then left it for a few hours and then set up the heaters and some of the filters, waited a bit more then added the fish and last of the filters.... as long as your filters don't dry out the bacteria don't die, keep the old water, the mass of new water for me and the day moving certainly caused some stress for my fish.... especially some of my older one's...
Rockets2K answered it up above. I'll post it again for ya: "on top of that, a large tank allows you to keep some of the breeds in the way that they really like. What I mean by that is that most fish like to be around alot of their same kind. Like in the example you provided with your friends tank...he has one male with many females...that is the way alot of the schooling fish are in nature..(btw...that does sound like breeding behaviour)" I don't know much about live-bearers myself.
Oh sorry about that. Thanks for the info but as with many times I'll probably have more questions. Man you guys have exposed many things I did not know about aquariums. Thanks a million!
BTW, do plants help in ANY way to the cycling process? Wal-Mart is selling some cheap plant bulbs (3-5) for like $1.97 and if I do get a larger tank would these benefit in any way? Are plants adversely affected by ammonia/nitrite spikes?
Hey, I'm a guy who somehow destroyed hundreds of bucks worth of fish, a room, and books I had had for 30 years without even being there! No thanks needed here.
I havent really kept plants..but afaik.....plants help in the same way that trees help our environment.....they live on the waste products around them....in the case of plants, they eat up nitrates..thats one of the reasons why used aquarium water is great for putting on your garden/outside plants.(guys, feel free to correct me on this..Im not positive about the theory) As far as will they be effected by the ammonia...well...just about any life form isnt going to thrive with too much ammonia around.. possibly Smeg, Doc or Deck can better answer this...from what they have said..they have had success with live plants in a tank...
Fishwater was terrific for plants inside and out. My wife and I don't have green thumbs, but we did far better when we had it. I always had softwater tanks. It may make a difference. Maybe Doc or Smeg know more about that.
Plants most definitely help with cycling google it............ fish free cycling and chemical free cycling can be done with planted tanks.... they can do it on their own or in combination speed up things.... can be bothered to get technical but plants are the best thing for tanks and the fish... and help greatly in the cycling process..... I use my fish water on my plants, they seem to like it, that reminds me, must do a water change btw Deck and R2K - what's your experience with Angel fish, the mrs wanted soem so got a small pair, one has grown quickly and think is getting a bit nippy......
I used to have one Black Angel, a male, and as coal black as I could find. If you have a pair, I think you're asking for trouble, imo. Frequently, even the single male I kept would turn out to be an a-hole, so I traded him in and looked for another I liked. When they get large, wow, they really can be striking in a tank like you have, Smeg. That was my experience, anyway. I don't blame your lady for wanting one. I just wouldn't have two. They can really be nippy... no kidding. It's just that they aren't all like that.
so what one on it's own will be fine at the moment it is mostly nippy to the other angels and to the panchax's which only hang up the top.... nothing serious... but the mrs knows the rules on the angels
Actually, I've never done live plants in my tank. I doubt I ever will - too much time and can be pointless with most cichlids. All they'll do is rip it up and re-arrange as they see fit.
I actually have 4 Angels in my octagon tank...I would have more but good veiltails are so hard to find around here. In my experience....when you only have a few(less than 6 or so) one will be the dominant one...and they have been known to pick on the ones lower in status in thier school. Angels must be kept in multiples..as many as you can is the best. Even now...with only 4 in mine...the nipping at each other is not real common...normally only when they arre fighting over food.. I like em..especially the one with the really long veiltail-style fins...the only down side to them is that you cant keep some of the smaller species (like barbs) with them cause they love to nip at the long flowing fins. Get her some more angels....then the one will leave the other fish alone...unless he is just a b*stard at heart... Doc, thats the main reason why I never really tried plants....I have always kept cichlids of one kind of the other...tank of africans...fuggedaboutit....Oscars and Dempseys...heh....torn to shreds in no time.. th efew times I tried....they just didnt seem to florish...I gave up ppretty quick.
from my experience, I wouldn't recomend 2 angle fish together in one tank. I had one that was real nippy and kept biting and tearing parts of the other fish (fins).
Ain't it a trip, R2K? Everyone has different experiences. I think it depends a lot on what you have with them and if there is any interest in breeding. They school, which is cool, but when they start to pair off, or start thinking about pairing off, then they can raise cain with themselves or the kind of fish I usually had a lot of... types of Tetras. They didn't bother my dwarf cichlids that I can remember. If you have a really big tank, I think it helps a bunch. I had better luck with one, but I wasn't trying to center the tank around them. If I were doing that, I might have given more thought to what I had with the Angels. In my tank, it was fit in or hit the road. I never had problems from the angels I had with the Congo Tetras. Those guys, when they get some size, can take care of themselves in a school. Where I had problems was with the smaller tetras, like the school of Cardinals I liked to keep. It looks like you have a lot of fish, Smeg, who would be kinda defenseless from an Angel if it decided to get nippy. But something you have going for you is a large tank, which gives everyone more elbow room. I'm really starting to miss having fish.
