Upgrading my 20 gallons to 30 gallons

[Karen B.]

Greetings 

I currently have a 20 gallons high (24 x 12 x 16) and I feel it’s a bit overcrowded or, at least, that my honey gourami don’t have enough space to be away from one another. (1m honey gourami, 2f, 15 Chili Rasbora, 6-8 false julii corydoras). The population won’t change.

So I decided to upgrade to a 30 gallons (36 x 12 x 16). I know it’s not much of an upgrade but living in a 1rst floor apartment, so much water actually freaks me out.

So I will keep everything- plants, substrate (I have flourish black sand but it turned a bit grey over the year so I will mix in some stoney black river sand from Estes), sponge filter, HOB filter (Aqueon 30 gallons quietflow), rocks… Only thing I will change is my piece of wood.

2 questions :

1 - will I lose my cycle?

2 - Should I upgrade my HOB to a 50 gallons one?

If you have any other advices or suggestions, I am all ears.

Thank you!

[Katherine]

You shouldn't lose your whole cycle, but might lose some bacteria. I'd plan to feed light for a little bit and test your water fairly often at first to keep an eye on it. Try to disturb your filter media as little as possible.

 

[Odd Duck]

As long as you don’t over lean clean your filter media and don’t let it sit, or dry out, or anything else, you shouldn’t lose your filtration capacity.  I’m fond of overfiltering but tend to do it mostly by adding sponge filters.  But I think a larger HOB isn’t going to hurt anything with the crew you have.  You will likely set back your plants a bit unless you have them all in pots.  What is your biofiltration media?  I’ve transferred sponge blocks from one filter to the next with only the lightest rinse (and sometimes a strong rinse and swish) in old tank water and never had an issue.  But I’ve also seen people over lean the biofiltration and have temporary set backs.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I would put the inhabitants, plants and hardscape and aquarium water in a tote 20 g or larger. Run your filter on the tub while you are setting up the new tank.

Then I would move the substrate after a good gravel vacuum. I would use at least half the water from your tote adding it to freshly dechlorinated tap or whatever water you use. Place plants and hardscape. Move the filter over - if you have an air pump and bubbler run it in the tub. Once the water clears - maybe keep some polyfill or filter floss on hand, if you have a powerhead I will often wrap a filterfloss pad around the bottom and ziptie or rubberband on to collect all the detritus in the water column. Then I would move over the fish.

You could run both this filter and the new larger filter for a week and then transition just to the larger filter - squeeze the juice out of your old media into the new one to kick start it before you run it and then add that media to the existing media when you transition to the new one alone. I also like to have a cycled filter on-hand for new fish or projects, hospital tanks etc So it may not be a bad idea to keep them both on the tank.