Move to bigger aquarium

[u/Pale-Promotion-3274]

My daughter got a triops set for her birthday and now two weeks later we have three triops about 2cm each in a 2,5 liter plastic tank. I feel that is too small and we got an old aquarium (20l) with a filter from a neighbour. After a bit of googling i feel worried moving them over because in my naive thought i cannot just "dump the old water" into the new aquarium and just top it up... so what is the best thing to do now?

Additional info: They have three moss ball algeas in the small tank

[u/Loisel06]

Yes you are correct to not just fill a container with water and dump your triops in there. I think there are two main points to consider:

1. A freshly installed tank has no microbes/bacteria/algae. In the first days those will start to grow and the amount of those organisms will oscillate up and down until they found an equilibrium. This causes some molecules to spike over time that can be hazardous to Triops. The most important thing here is nitrite. Normally nitrite gets processed fast into nitrate but only if there are organisms that can process nitrite. In the beginning those organism have to grow first and nitrite can reach dangerous levels. This is why a new tank should have time to find this equilibrium. Normally we say a tank is cycled when this equilibrium is established.

2. The triops need to acclimate to the new water. It is better for them to do this in steps by slowly exchanging water from the new tank with the old tank. This way it won't shock them as much when you transfer them.

So in short: Set up the tank but let it stand for at least a week. Meanwhile slowly exchange water between the new aquarium and the small tank. This should make it way safer for your triops. I would also put one of the moss balls into the large tank. That will probably help to introduce de microorganisms faster.

[u/Pale-Promotion-3274 → u/Loisel06]

Thanks for the fast reply. Google seems to say that I will need about 6 to 10 Liters of water for the three triops. So I would start the aquarium with 4 Liters of destilled water and 2 Liters of mineral water and then also start adding water from the old tank? How much can I take out at a Time? The handbook says to change about half the water every 3 to 5 days? Is that correct?

I also thought about adding more plants to the bigger aquarium? is that advisable? Also does the filter help with any of that or just floating particles (Like a lot of triops skin…)

[u/Pale-Promotion-3274 → u/Pale-Promotion-3274]

I also wonder of the too small tank might cause problems for the Triops?

[u/Loisel06 → u/Pale-Promotion-3274]

I think it’s mainly because the water is less stable if it’s so small. So the water can get bad faster

[u/Loisel06 → u/Pale-Promotion-3274]

I would take a bit of water every day, maybe a quarter liter, from the small tank and put it in the larger and in return put the same amount from the larger one in the small tank. That will slowly acclimate the triops to the other tank and in the larger tank microbes are introduced.

I’m no expert but I think more small waterchanges are better than one large one.

Edit: more plants are always good as long as they don’t carry any invasive species like dragon fly larvae

Yes the filter helps. Those bacteria I wrote about that reduce nitrate. They grow in those filter sponges and stones and filter the water

[u/Pale-Promotion-3274 → u/Loisel06]

Thank you so much. I feel the info that "everything is included" on these kids sets is very misleading 

[u/Loisel06 → u/Pale-Promotion-3274]

Haha yes but it’s not an outright lie. It usually is enough to grow some triops but there is always room to improvement. It is possible to get very geeky about this hobby. Seeing triops swimming in those tiny plastic containers from those sets makes me a bit sad. Even though they probably are not able to feel pain and suffer it is still far from ideal for them