# Transferring goldfish to new aquarium. Any tips please?



## debtherat

I have acquired 3 cast off orphaned goldfish and a pitifully small :cryin: tank ! Also a new aquarium in which to put them. Its a 60 litre tank so my first question is will it be big enough for them ? 
Have set tank up using the supplied tap safe and filter start potions ; washed gravel and ornament through and have a couple of (real) plants in there also piece of bogwood. Fish are eagerly awaiting their new home, but am waiting til Sunday (7 days after setting up tank) to have water checked in PAH. At the moment the water seems cloudy -around the bog wood its tannin coloured which I expected, higher up it seems more milky/cloudy.
I am a total novice so apologies if my questions sound daft . But do i need to be doing anything else to the tank at the moment? The fish aren't going in til I know the water is ok but do i need to do anything about the cloudy water? 
Any advice will be much appreciated


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## Guest

You do need to do one thing to the tank: make it three times bigger...

60 litres is really only big enough for one goldfish, let alone three. If they're Common goldfish then these will need a pond or a 6 x 2 x 2ft tank once they're fully grown; they can easily hit 30cm/12" if they're given the room and they most certainly _must_ be given the room to reach their full size.

Seven days isn't really long enough to properly cycle an aquarium and adding three waste-factory goldfish all at the same time is going to place a hell load of biological strain on a filter that will barely have any time to mature properly. I'd buy your own liquid test kit and test the water every day for at least 2-3 weeks and be prepared to carry out daily 50% water changes in case the ammonia starts to creep upto dangerous levels - by dangerous I mean any level above 0ppm.


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## debtherat

Ok thanks for that. Well I don't have a pond  , so better start looking for someone who does! In the meantime should I use some of the water from the tank they are in at the moment in the new tank? Would that be helpful at all ?Cheers


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## Guest

The important things in your filter that break down harmful ammonia and solid waste are bacteria. Mature water does harbour beneficial micro-organisms in some cases however one thing that it doesn't normally contain is filter bacteria. Filter bacteria need a hard surface to colonize so I doubt adding 'mature' water to the tank will make any difference.


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## debtherat

Ok! thanks for your help


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## MattFisher

use as much of the old water as possible. This will stop the fish going into a completely new and alien enviroment. In the best scenario you should have used some of the water from the old tank in the new tank when setting it up. This would have given at least a small ammount of the beneficial bacteria time to colonize the new filter. Tap safe and nutra cycle are good also and really an essential but even with this your tank wont actualy get any of the needed bacteria until you either add 1 fish or add some of the water/gravel/decoration from the old tank. These will all carry a small amount of the bacteria you need and at least that way your starting off with some sort of nitrafying bacteria in the new aquarium. As for size this isnt really big enough for 3 standard single tail gold fish and you should really look at either upgrading the tank or moving the fish to a pond and getting some smaller fish. The temperate fish usualy stay alot smaller and also fancy gold fish ie orandas dont get quite as big quite as fast.


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## MattFisher

Chillinator said:


> The important things in your filter that break down harmful ammonia and solid waste are bacteria. Mature water does harbour beneficial micro-organisms in some cases however one thing that it doesn't normally contain is filter bacteria. Filter bacteria need a hard surface to colonize so I doubt adding 'mature' water to the tank will make any difference.


the water wont contain a great amount of beneficial bacteria but it will contain traces of it plus fish waste (amonia) that will help to kick start the bacteria into swing.


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## Guest

MattFisher said:


> the water wont contain a great amount of beneficial bacteria but it will contain traces of it plus fish waste (amonia) that will help to kick start the bacteria into swing.


Bacteria can't survive for long without a hard surface and those are already floating around the water column are probably dead.

It's better to use the old filter media; assuming it's mature.


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