Moving fish to new tank, help

[thetorturedpoetsdepartmentssecretary]

I've got a 56 litre tank and I've just bought a 94 litre tank. I intend to move everything over to the new tank. I'll be using the same filter, I'll get a new one later if necessary.

How best to go about it? I thought I'd keep the fish in a bucket whilst moving over the gravel, plants and pebbles, then syphon off the rest of the water, add it all to the new tank, fill up with clean water.

I currently have 3 swordtails and 2 platys, none very big. Once all settled and when the water quality is ok I intend to add more fish.

Does the plan above sound do-able? Anything I've missed?

TIA

If you're going to use tap water, fill some buckets and let it stand for a couple of days to let any chlorine evaporate.

If your budget allows, I'd probably get new gravel, and a filter and just set up the new tank running until the water quality settles, then move the fish over. You could put some of the water from the existing tank. If you go this route, keep the gravel from the first tank as fish tanks breed. You'll need it eventually. New filter now enables you to have a spare for when the inevitable filter failure happens.

Do I need to do that even if I'm using tapsafe?

I had an RO unit, and even then I left it to settle a day or two. There are two processes, the first is to remove the chemicals from the water, and the second is to get the pH to the desired level and get a healthy bacterial system working. I used a fluidised bed filter, which takes a while to settle but was much more stable once it did. Having two filters will be your friend when it comes to cleaning too as you can clean one, then run them side by side to balance, then clean the other in a repeating cycle.

As long as the fish don't get too much of a pH shock moving from one to the other, you should be OK, so I would move at least 1/3 of the water from the existing tank to minimise the opportunity for that to happen.

Ok thanks that's really helpful. I'll buy another filter tomorrow and fill the tank and leave it to settle a few days.

Can you recommend a good filter that's easy to clean and maintain but not too expensive?