I got a new tank for my Oscars(there not in it yet) Its been set up for a couple days getting the heat established along with the bacteria. I have 12 feeders in it to start making a little mess..Earlier today i moved my Pleco's over to the new tank from the old one. Now my question is when should i move my Oscars becuase they seem to becoming paranoid in there tank..when ever i go near it they seem to hide(or try to) from me beacuse ive been slowly taking stuff outta there tank. And befor i put them in im going to move my current filter over into the new tank for about an hour and hopfuly get some of the goo bacteria out of it into the new filters.

Any help would be grate thanks.

I'm afraid it does take quite a while to establish a biological filter. Just transferring your filter for a couple of hours is going to do absolutely nothing. The 12 feeders will certainly add quite a bit of ammonia into the water, this will kickstart your biological filter. If I was you, I would leave things as they are, you certainly don't want to cycle tank with an Oscar.

It does rather sound cruel, but when cycling the tank with fish, you should be using fish that you don't mind losing and you probably won't intend on keeping. The problem is, the only way to establish a biological filter is to introduce quite a lot of ammonia into the tank. Fish living in these types of conditions can be put under a great deal of stress which is often fatal, if not straightaway, later on in their life. The biggest problem with the Oscars is that if they are put under stress too often, they often develop diseases later on them their life so this is why I would avoid using them to cycle a tank.

Just keep cycling your tank as it is, keep an eye on the water conditions and once you start seeing ammonia appear, start doing the water change every other day, just a small one, around 25%. What this will do is hopefully keep the ammonia at a level that it won't kill all the fish, but leave enough ammonia in the tank to establish a biological filter. This is why cycling the tank with fish take so long. If you want to do it quickly, you do a fishless cycle, this way you can put a lot of ammonia in, much more than any fish could withstand.

If i understand this right you have your oscars is one cycled tank and you want to move them to a bigger tank. If this is the case then just move the filter from your old tank onto the new tank and also add you oscars at the same time, Bingo one cyled tank. If you dont plan on leaving the old filter on the new tank after a few days take the media out of the old filter and put them into the new filter on your new tank

It does rather depend on how big the new tank is. If the old tank is 30 gallons, and the new tank is hundred gallons, I don't think the filter is going to be quite adequate.

However, like Del boy said, cycling the tank means establishing a biological filter, so in theory, the main filter is rather like the engine of the car, it can be transferred to any tank and you instantly have a tank that fish can live in.

Having said this, you won't have all the bacteria living in the substrate, on rocks, etc etc. I also don't like the thought of completely fresh water that hasn't had any fish living it running through an established filter. Maybe I am being too cautious, as long as you use a water condition to remove any impurities, you should be okay, I just prefer to have established water running through my filters. You could argue that when you do a water change, you have fresh water running through. To a certain extent, this is true, but you really shouldn't have to the any more than a 25 to 30% water change.

I do 50% water changes and i dont have any problems with ammonia and nitrite, which i would get if fresh water was a problem to established filters

Most bacteria live in the filter, the amount in the substrate and rocks etc is minimal. The filter will catch up very quickly. Just my opinion. Bacteria multiply exponentially, so the hardest part is at the start, the easiest at the end. So by transferring the old filter to the new tank and leaving it there, the bacteria in the filter will very quickly take up the slack.

Personally i would move the filter to the new tank and run it with the new filter. After a couple of weeks i would put the media from the old filter into the new filter