Exciting! Please help me get to a better start this time!

HI there, some of you have been helping me get my new 10-gallon aquarium to a good place after some bad advice from the LFS. Yesterday I was there wondering why I hadn't gotten a larger tank, and decided it was silly to do that right now. Well, today I'm driving down the street and I see a 30-gallon tank, sitting on the curb for free! Of course I threw it in the car and brought it home. I just hosed it off and made sure it held water, which it does, yay! Now I need to get a cover, lights, and filter. I want to not make the same mistakes with this tank! I'm reading through the beginner guides to cycling and will begin that in the new tank, and take my time this time. I do have the API master kit so I can keep checking. So the first question is: should I do a fishless cycle, leaving the fish I have in the poorly cycling tank? Or do I just move them into the bigger tank (since the small one isn't cycled anyway, maybe they'd do better with more water)? I'm not sure what the right thing is to do for them. Any advice would be great! Going to post some other specific questions in the sub-forums.

 

Ok, picking up a tank off the street is pretty scary, because you don't know what was in it. So my suggestion is to give it a light bleach bath. Like 1/2 a teaspoon in 5 gallons of water and wash the entire tank down with it. That way you can kill any bacteria that could be in the tank. Then rinse, since some more, and if you think it's rinsed well, rinse more. Then let it air dry in the sun for the rest of the day. Then hopefully the tank is safe for fish.

As for cycling, that is really up to you. First decide in what BB you want to use. Stability works for both, TSS is more for fish in cycling, but people here have had success using it for fishless. Now the next thing you want to decide what will be your ammonia source. Fish is one, buying ammonia is the other. Once you decide these things, we can suggest ways to help you cycle.

 

Congratulations! Great find

First I would follow the above suggestions for cleaning it since you don't really know what it's been used for.

Then, if your 10 has even begun to cycle, I would just move everything over to the new tank and carry on from there!

 

Thank you both for the advice! I think the tank was used for a hamster or gerbil which made me feel a bit better. But I will definitely do the bleach cleanup and put it in the 100 degree sun we're expecting for tomorrow!

 

Having kept rodents in tanks before, I would recommend resealing it if the silicone has been chewed at all

 

Having kept rodents in tanks before, I would recommend resealing it if the silicone has been chewed at all

agreed...my hamster made a mess of the silicone in his tank at night lol

 

It does look a little shreddy, though it does hold water. Do I just get some clear silicone at the hardware store?

 

I'm not sure about clear silicone, I know a tube of aquarium silicone is only $5-10 but hopefully someone with experience with regular silicone can advise you on what to use.

 

You can use hardware store silicone but only certain kinds and nothing with mold and mildew inhibitors! GE Silicone 1 All Purpose Clear is what I've used before with success. You just have to make sure that you leave it to cure for a while, I think it took a week for me and I left it outside in the rain because it stinks of acetic acid.

This stuff:

 

Ah didn't know there was aquarium silicone! I will look.
Also, if I'm just moving everything to the larger tank, do I just move the current filter too? I know it's too small for that big of a tank, but I also know the bacteria in it are hugely important for cycling. Do I put it and the appropriate size filter for a while?

 

I would suggest you do move your filter over for at least 2 weeks, while the new filter seeds itself. Once your new filter is up to par, you then can remove the old filter.

 

yes that's what I would do, or you could add the media from the old filter to the new one, but adding the whole filter would be best unless you need the older filter to keep the other tank running. if you don't need to use the "small filter" on the other tank anymore, leaving the old and new one set up, for extra filtration and back up if one breaks, is a really good idea imo.