Moving fish to do major tank maintanence

This week I purchased several pieces of driftwood and I'm planning on putting it all in the tank probably tomorrow. I'm going to have to move a lot of things around though to accommodate all of this new wood. I purchased a large plastic bin at Wal-Mart to soak the wood these past few days, I was thinking about adding some of my tank water to this bin and moving the fish there for an hour or two while I set up the new wood and move everything around in their tank.

My question is, would moving the fish be more stressful than just leaving them in the tank while I move everything around? Also, oxygen wise, would there be plenty of oxygen without any kind of added aeration in the plastic bin to last a couple of hours? The bin is about 25 gallons, I was going to fill it about half way, so about 12 gallons of tank water, and I have:

1 blue gourami
6 panda cory's
4 cherry barbs
3 longfin zebra danios
1 regular zebra danio
1 oto

 

I would fill the bin most of the way, and perhaps this: I use a cycled sponge filter to run in an extra 10 gallon I've got when I'm doing big wc or when I would be scaping for more than a couple hours. Soon enough we will all have qt tanks, and won't have to ask these questions. I'll work on it, too. If the cories like to stay on the bottom, they might not be cool with you adding the wood, but if you're not going to be upsetting the substrate too much, or planting, as longas the tank is ~40g as your stocking list suggest, you should be able to pull it off. Pics of wood and tank? Have you boiled the wood? Speeds up soaking and kills surface contaminants. Expect a bit of fuzzies on the wood, however.
Good luck. Pictures!

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The tank is a 65 tall. The wood hasn't been boiled yet, I bought a very large pot last night to do just that, but the thing is too big for my stove haha. I think I can make it work if I remove one of the elements.

I may just go buy an air pump, I was thinking of adding some aeration to my tank anyways, guess now would be a good time to get one so I know the fish are fine in their temp home for the afternoon. I don't have any kind of filter I can use in there.

 

Sounds great. Might want to think about adding a sponge filter to your next amazon order, they're about five bucks.

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yeah id go with a filter too. post some pics of that tank when done!

 

Is it a crazy idea to just use sponge filters as your only filtration? I'm all about simplicity, right now I have a Fluval 406 canister, is it reasonable at all to replace this filter with one or two appropriately sized sponge filters?

 

Imo I would keep the fish in the tank.

 

I would not use just a sponge filter on that large tank, they aren't the prettiest and you would need at least two large sponge filters in my opinion. They are great biological filters but not very good for mechanical filtration.

Stick with your canister, they take up the least space and do the best job, sponges are more ideal on small tanks with small inhabitants that don't make a lot of waste.

 

I would not use just a sponge filter on that large tank, they aren't the prettiest and you would need at least two large sponge filters in my opinion. They are great biological filters but not very good for mechanical filtration.

Stick with your canister, they take up the least space and do the best job, sponges are more ideal on small tanks with small inhabitants that don't make a lot of waste.

I've got plenty of things to hide the filter behind, not too worried about the appearance really. I have a lot of very fine filter floss, I was thinking I could cut a piece and wrap it around the shaft of the sponge filter assembly and slip the sponge over it giving me even finer filtration. Not sure what this would do to water flow though.

My main concern, I'll have to read more about it, is the amount of surface area for the BB colony. I obviously have much more surface area with my canister, including all of the biomax and pond matrix I'm using. With the sponger filter I'd have just the one sponge, or two if I go that route.

Can one air pump be used for two filters?

 

I've got plenty of things to hide the filter behind, not too worried about the appearance really. I have a lot of very fine filter floss, I was thinking I could cut a piece and wrap it around the shaft of the sponge filter assembly and slip the sponge over it giving me even finer filtration. Not sure what this would do to water flow though.

My main concern, I'll have to read more about it, is the amount of surface area for the BB colony. I obviously have much more surface area with my canister, including all of the biomax and pond matrix I'm using. With the sponger filter I'd have just the one sponge, or two if I go that route.

Can one air pump be used for two filters?

Yes, you can get air pumps with more than one outlet or use a splitter but you would lose pressure with a splitter.
I have one dual outlet pump running two sponge filters on two 10 gallon shrimp tanks.