Swapping tanks

I'm heading over to a buddies tomorrow to take his 120G off his hands. I plan to put my cichlids that I have in a 45G in it. He had an Oscar, 2 plecos and a couple other fish in the tank that are being re-homed. My question is can I just clean out his tank, to make sure it doesn't have any contaminants in it, put my sand and rocks in it and hook-up my FX5 from my already cycled cichlid tank and let it run for a few hours and then drop my fish in? I'm worried that the tank may have a mini cycle and kill some off my fish.

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Permalink Reply by Mc Fish on April 7, 2012 at 5:07pm

Since you're running an established filter as well as substrate and ornaments you're adding a whole lot of beneficial bacteria to your tank. The majority of your bacteria should be attached to surface area vs free floating in water but I would add some old fish water from your old tank anyways. Make sure the water is dechlorinated before adding water to your tank. There is a risk of small spikes but I've cycled quite a few tanks using just an old filter and only received spikes once. Even then they were minor. Keep prime on hand in case of larger spikes and overdose it if you need to.

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Permalink Reply by Jason DuBois on April 8, 2012 at 1:00pm

Your plan should work fine remember you can always do large water changes. I actually wonder if your bacteria would have enough to eat with all that clean water they might suffer for a few days with out enough fish waste. Probably not a big deal ether way.

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Permalink Reply by Taylor Gray on April 10, 2012 at 10:58pm

pour the water from the container they were being held in with them, when fish are stressed they poop and adding poop will give the bacteria a food source.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Carbary on April 11, 2012 at 12:52am

Tank swap went perfect without a loss. I took as much of the water from my 45G as I could and then filled it up and primed the water and let my cycled FX5 from my cichlid tank and one of the 405s from the cycled 120G and let it run while I build up the rocks and planted my Java Fern. All the while I added a little bit of the new water to my buckets of fish to acclimatize them to the tank. After 30 min I dropped them in and here they are happy as can be.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Jango on April 11, 2012 at 6:06pm

Most people will say no, but I would. Floating plants like water cabbage will suck up any xtra ammonia in the tank. Be generous with the water changes too. I predict that your cichlids will love the new, bigger, fresh environment.