Moving in one or two months

N64 · Aug 11, 2021

Hello my tank has been cycling for about a month now. I don't want to add fish because I'm actually planning on moving in one or two months. Should I dose ammonia for the bacteria seeing I won't be adding anything that produces ammonia? Also how would I go about moving my tank to new house without having to restart my tank. Thanks in advance!

melonheadorion · Aug 11, 2021

you will want to keep ghost feeding the tank so that the bacteria can continue thriving. many people use a piece of raw shrimp, or other fish foods to do it. moving, from what i have gathered from here, and other sources online is tha tyou would remove most of the water to make it possible to carry the tank. remove the rock. you can use the tank water you took out to store those rocks in while transporting it, and once you get it set back up, just add it all back in. since you dont have any fish, you dont really have too much that you have to worry about other than setting it back up, making sure all of the parameters are where they need to be, and going from there

Azedenkae · Aug 11, 2021

N64 said:
Hello my tank has been cycling for about a month now. I don't want to add fish because I'm actually planning on moving in one or two months. Should I dose ammonia for the bacteria seeing I won't be adding anything that produces ammonia? Also how would I go about moving my tank to new house without having to restart my tank. Thanks in advance!

One or two months?

In that case you'd definitely want to dose ammonia, yeah. You don't have to do much though. Nitrifiers can go for months ammonia-starved before really showing declines in nitrification capacity and/or populations. So this is more just out of an abundance of caution than anything - just dose some ammonia every two weeks or so. 2ppm should suffice. If you want to be even more careful, you can dose 2ppm weekly.

As for moving - usually if you can keep your biomedia submerged in water, that'd be best. Failing that, wrapping them up in damp towels or paper works. If the move is not too far, it's not as much of a worry. How far are you moving? Or rather, how long do you reckon the biomedia would be out of the water?

N64 · Aug 12, 2021

Azedenkae said:
One or two months?

In that case you'd definitely want to dose ammonia, yeah. You don't have to do much though. Nitrifiers can go for months ammonia-starved before really showing declines in nitrification capacity and/or populations. So this is more just out of an abundance of caution than anything - just dose some ammonia every two weeks or so. 2ppm should suffice. If you want to be even more careful, you can dose 2ppm weekly.

As for moving - usually if you can keep your biomedia submerged in water, that'd be best. Failing that, wrapping them up in damp towels or paper works. If the move is not too far, it's not as much of a worry. How far are you moving? Or rather, how long do you reckon the biomedia would be out of the water?

Wow thank you . I will dose 2ppm weekly of ammonia from Dr Tim's. Should I do water changes at all or no. Thanks again