Advice for fostering friend's fish

DaddyFish · Aug 11, 2020

I have a good friend in another state that's moving. I've been setting up a brand new 90-gal 4-foot to house (foster) the majority of his fish.

He has a 110-gallon hex acrylic AIO for his main DT. He is migrating his corals to a 45-gal in his temporary housing while they purchase and move. His BIG snowflake eel and other fish from the 110 are coming to live with me for a while.

The snowflake is going in my 54-corner that's well-established, tightly covered etc. I recently moved my snowflake out of that tank to make room for his.

Advice that I'm seeking has to do with the brand new 90-gal foster home I've established. Tank basics are...

* 4-foot Aqueon 90-gal
* FX6 filter with roughly 6-liters of Seachem Matrix (about 2-liters came from one of my active tanks, other 4-liters are new)
* Roughly 30-lbs of dry rock
* Roughly 60-lbs of Aragonite Sand
* 36-watt inline UV (not currently running)
* Two weeks ago the tank was filled with RO/DI, UV off, salted to 1.023, buffered to 8.3 and seeded with recommended dose of Dr. Tims's Ammonia. Seachem Stability dosed as label recommended for seven days. Ammonia was added again around Day-5 to bring level back up to .05.
* pH has been stable 8.2 - 8.3 for several days now.
* On Day-8 ammonia dropped to .03, Nitrite low but present, Nitrate low but present, tank clearly cycling through. Ammonia has continued to drop and yesterday was below .02, so I added a Valentini Puffer, Molly Miller Blenny and some snails. Started feeding heavily. All doing well.
* Continuing to daily dose Seachem Stability at 25cc/day, every day, well past the end of Week-2.

MY QUESTION IS... Is there anything obvious that I'm missing that would help ramp-up the bacteria in this tank? I need this tank to instantaneously support a medium bio load of fish when they arrive this coming weekend. At that point the foster tank will be almost three weeks old with about 2-liters of Matrix that's 6-months established.
Is there anything more to do beyond closely monitoring the ammonia levels AFTER the fish are introduced?
Anyone have any tricks for prepping a tank in advance of a big change?

I have plenty of salt/buffer/AmmoGuard/Stress Guard/Safe and can generate enough water for up to 50% daily water changes if needed.
I plan to turn on the UV 24-hours before his fish arrive.

Suggestions???

PicassoClown04 · Aug 11, 2020

How many fish and what size/species are you gonna be fostering? May have to just throw a whole bunch of wet live rock into the tank with them to provide enough good bacteria to prevent an ammonia bloom if there’s a lot

fishguy242 · Aug 11, 2020

hi i would suggest having him bring fish in 5 gallon buckets of his water 3/4 full,acclimate to your water and add his water ,remove yours,keep as much of his clean water as possible

lazycouch · Aug 11, 2020

you can use prime to neutralize toxic ammonia and nitrites as well as dose live nitrifying bacteria daily to keep up with food and fish waste as well as the nutrients prime will be breaking down

DaddyFish · Aug 11, 2020

lazycouch said:
you can use prime to neutralize toxic ammonia and nitrites as well as dose live nitrifying bacteria daily to keep up with food and fish waste as well as the nutrients prime will be breaking down

Yes, good idea. I mix my own "Prime" by carefully diluting Seachem SAFE. I have enough on-hand to make about 500-gallons of Prime equivalent.

DaddyFish · Aug 11, 2020

fishguy242 said:
hi i would suggest having him bring fish in 5 gallon buckets of his water 3/4 full,acclimate to your water and add his water ,remove yours,keep as much of his clean water as possible

We discussed replacing my water with his, but he and I use essentially the same chemistry, and my water is filtered through 6-stages then RO/DI. We're definitely doing a very slow drip acclimation on all his fish. Total transport time from netting to final release should be less than 10-hours.

Seachem Stress Guard on his end when they're placed in buckets might help too.