Advice on a large FW setup.

[Anonymous]

Hey guys!

I'm setting up a holding system to house 50-60 fantail goldfish. Does 300 gallons sound about right? I'm going to use a bare Rubbermaid stock tank. Two wet dry filters, two large heaters, and two circulating pumps around, oh, 2000 gph total. Every week I'll drain down 100 gallons or so and refill.

Can I stock a few of these on day one, and add say, another 20 at a time a couple weeks later? Basically my dumb question is: How long does the cycle take in freshwater?

 

[Anonymous]

Matt,

Just throw a 6 inch piece a Anacharis in there with some tap water and you're good to go, the plant will actually circulate the water for you at about 4000gph, you can slow the flow down down by trimming it a bit. This should allow you to stock between 7000 and 8000 3 inch fish in a 300 gallon rubbermaind container.

Be warned that sometimes plants produce such amazing water quality, that the fish actually die from being too healthy. Their systems just haven't evolved the capability of sustaining such good health. To mitigate this, you might be forced to do a water change now and then to crap up your water a bit.

Hope this helps buddy.

Jim

 

[Anonymous]

What size are the fish?

Do they need a heater? If in a climate controlled space I wouldn't think they would.

Cycling a raw tank takes a little while - test as you go. Any chance of getting some seeded bio media from someone to add to your wet/dries?

 

[Anonymous]

They don't need a heater - they're cold water fish; so climate control in the room is not necessary either.

 

[Anonymous]

Constant temps are good to maintain if possible though.

 

[Anonymous]

There are actually some pretty good biological additives that could cycle an aquarium pretty quickly, although I would still stock thr tank on a staged schedule. Goldfish produce a lot of ammonia.

 

[Anonymous]

Bottled additives designed to "cycle" tanks are crap Glenn.
Cycling a freshwater tank is very simple, and it doesn't require a visit to the dry goods section of a LFS.

 

[Anonymous]

Seachem's Stability and Marineland's Bio Spira both work very well. I cycled a 36 gallon tank with German Blue rams in a week using the Stability.

 

[Anonymous]

What size are the fish?

Do they need a heater? If in a climate controlled space I wouldn't think they would.

Cycling a raw tank takes a little while - test as you go. Any chance of getting some seeded bio media from someone to add to your wet/dries?

Uh, yeah! Hadn't even considered that.

The fish will be around 2-3".

 

[Anonymous]

Never kept goldfish myself, but always read/heard they should have round 10 gallons per fish.

Why can't you just cycle the tank with some fish food and no fish in there to eat it?

 

[Anonymous]

Seachem's Stability and Marineland's Bio Spira both work very well. I cycled a 36 gallon tank with German Blue rams in a week using the Stability.

the bio-conditioners that use the 'sporax' vs the 'bacter' bacteria actually do work fairly well.


the cycle in fw takes about 4 weeks (for each bacterial colony to double stably).

you're looking at at least 5-10 gallons/inch of goldfish for long term health