Adding new fish! Removing gravel to bb!

[kyliesdiscus]

My first question is I have 5 discus in a 400 litre tank I plan to add one more out of quarantine tommorow into the main tank, can I add 4 more to the main tank next week from qaurantine without causing a ammonia spike??? Can I add more plants to eat extra ammonia from new fish?
Q2- I want to remove my gravel to make it bb how can I do this without disrupting the bio filter system?

[kyliesdiscus]

Should I wait to remove the gravel after I have added all desired fish and how many is suitable for 400 litre 6 ft tank???

[Trier20]

Ok... So there is BB in your substrate so when you remove it you will get some sort of cycle. IMO i would remove the substrate before adding the new fish. One less fish to transfer back and forth from tanks. I used to product called cycle by nutrafin to help speed up the cycling progress when I changed substrates. Are you painting the bottom of the tank while the substrate is out?


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[Orange Crush]

Remove small amounts of gravel at a time so you are not removing too much of the BB at once. This will help keep the effect of an ammonia spike/mini cycle to a minimum.
If you are adding the fish to the tank with the gravel you are removing, I would put the fish in there before you remove gravel so you have as much of the BB as possible. However, it will still increase the bioload but the impact will be less. Make sure to test the water and do wc's as needed to keep ammonia etc. to a bare minimum. Also, use Prime or Safe as your water cond since they help neutralize amm/nitrIte. Additionally you can use a product like Seachem's Stability which will help with preventing "new tank syndrome" aka cycle/mini cycle.

[Orange Crush]

Plants do help with ammonia (NH3) because they use up the Nitrogen as "food". However, unless you have a lot of plants you might still get an amount of ammonia that is toxic. No mater how you end up doing this make sure to test your water daily, and do daily water changes at least until things are done cycling. hth

[Skip]

i used buckets.. filled all the buckets i had with tank water.. put fish in buckets.. drained tank.. removed substrate.. pour buckets back into tank.. then added fish.. then filled up with freshwater.. it was like a very large water change..

worked for me.> :)

i used the KISS method