Fish Tank EMERGENCY

Tyyrlym

No on both counts. First off, most of your bacteria are living in your filter. There are some in the gravel and such but the lion's share will be in the filter. You'll want to closely monitor the tank after the change (and go nuts with the gravel vac during it to clean up the bottom of the) but I wouldn't expect a full on cycle, a mini one at best.

If you want to move the fish from this tank to another while you work on it I'd recommend getting them reacclimated to good clean water from the tap. Do small partial changes or additions to slowly bring what is in there now close to what comes out of the tap and eventually go ahead and move the fish to the QT tank with all new water. There aren't any real amount of useful bacteria in the water itself so reusing it will only help move the bad contaminants from it to your QT tank and then back into your newly fixed up tank.

epsilonvaz

Ok thanks for that! I will keep posting with updates .

I'm lucky you guys don't charge for this advice, all I can hope to do is one day contribute advice back to the community!

FordMan

Changing the substrate doesn't nessisarily mean you have to re-cycle the tank there should be plenty of nitrofying and denitrofying bacteria on the glass rocks filter etc. to re colonize the new substrate. Also if you want a planted tank the plants might thrive in the old gravel i mean just think of all the fertilizer... As for when to restock after about 4 weeks i'd say you could stock to half capacity. After another 6 weeks provided everything is going well i'd imagine you could bring it up to full capacity Which is surface area of the water divided by 10 for slim bodied fish tetra's danio's etc 12 for smaller cichlids and 18 for oscars pleco's gold fish or anything big and nasty.

Hope this helps!

willow

welcome back to the hobby :)
most if not all of what i would say,has been said.
i too don't think the tank looks that bad surprisinly enough. !
and welcom to FordMan aswell.

epsilonvaz

Phase 1 complete

Removed old gravel, completely emptied the tank, gave everything a good scrubbing. (the limescale was a complete b*tch to get off, and still is on the outside of the tank, but I will deal with that another day)

Got some danish quartz substrate and a black background.

Refilled the tank, treated water, let it run for 24hrs.

Re-introduced the veteran fish, got a few more from the (very helpful) LFS. Fish should appear in my signature I think.

Ordered a new lid also as the current is knackered.

Will monitor conditions and when all is good will up the stock, add some plants and wood.

Current pic:

epsilonvaz

hmm... starting to think the barbs are a little bit too aggressive for my liking, fighting eachother and the danios. Back to the LFS I think , they look so nice, what a shame.

willow

hi
how many barbs do you have ?

epsilonvaz

2 green, 2 tiger.

willow

hi
hmm sorry to say that you would need many more barbs to even have a small chance
of quiet.i'm talking around 10-12 and sometimes that's not enough.
so personally for you i'd say take them back unless you can inlarge the group.
sorry.

Tyyrlym

Yeah, your number of barbs is just too low. They aren't feeling comfortable. They are a schooling fish and if they don't have a large enough school they get aggressive to the other tank inhabitants. A large enough school of them will keep the aggression mostly confined to the school. You should have about 8 as a minimum and I'd go with even more if you've got the room. Less than that and they'll be little terrors.