Transferring my 55 to a 120 questions

[runway1]

I'll be transferring my 55 gal to a 120 gal. Here's the plan. Please advise or suggest what I may have missed.
1. Fill new tank with ~2" dead sand. (I only want a 2"-3" sand bed)
2. Place sand from 55 on top of new, dead sand.
3. Transfer 70# LR from 55 to 120 while keeping attached corals in the 55.
4. Add about 20# more rock - uncured (trying to control cost).
5. Add 30 gal new SW to 120.
6. Add 40 gal SW from 55 into 120.
7. Transfer corals and fish.
8. Add remaining water from 55.
9. Add new SW to fill and complete.
10. Will add more rock as weeks progress.

BIG Questions:
1. Should I skip using my old cc/sand combo for risk of turning up bad stuff?
2. Will my 70# of cured and healthy LR from the 55 be sufficient to seed the 120 without a new cycle?

Thanks all!!

 

[Phyl]

I wouldn't move the sand out of the tank before the fish get moved out. Mixing up that sand will do some nasty stuff to the water that they're left with. If I was going to add rock to a system and I didn't want to see a cycle I'd use dry base rock rather than uncured rock as I'd be very worried that the uncured rock would start a cycle.

1. Fill new tank with ~2" dead sand. (I only want a 2"-3" sand bed)
1a. Move fish & corals to a temporary holding tank with water from the 55.
1b. Move all water that I want to re-use out of the tank into a rubbermaid, etc.
1c. Rinse the sand in the remaining water in the 55.
2. Place sand from 55 on top of new, dead sand.
3. Transfer 70# LR from 55 to 120 while keeping attached corals in the holding tank.
4. Add about 20# more base rock (even better for controlling costs).
5. Add 30 gal new SW to 120.
6. Add SW that was saved from the 55 into 120.
7. Transfer corals and fish.
8. Dump remaining water from 55.
9. Add new SW to fill and complete.
10. Will add more rock as weeks progress.

There are my thoughts... Good luck!

 

[runway1]

1c. Rinse the sand in the remaining water in the 55.

Do you mean shake it up with the remaining water real good and then just pour off the resulting, cloudy water? Does that sufficiently clean out the bad? Thanks.

 

[djlynch]

I recently went from a 55 reef to a 125 reef a few months ago. It only took a day to do - here were my steps.

1. Get LOTS of buckets and/or a rubbermaid container.
2. Pull out LR first into buckets, place rocks with corals on top
3. Take out fish. Put in a seperate container (I had an unused 20H, so it was easy for me in that sense)
4. Take out 65-75% water that you can use again, put in buckets.
5. Scoop out sand (I used plastic bowls and scooped into buckets and pitchers)
6. rinse sand if needed (i didn't - didn't wanna kill organisms in it)
7. Put dead sand in new tank. the put sand out of 55 in it.
8. Put in LR and reusable water.
9. Put in fish and corals
10.Add new sw to fill

To answer your questions, when I upgraded to my 125, thats EXACTLY how i did it and i had roughly the same amount of LR you do in my old 55. The tank didn't cycle, so for me this method worked fine. I did use my sand from my 55 (I had roughly a 6 inch sandbed in it) and everything was fine.

HTH

 

[Phyl]

Do you mean shake it up with the remaining water real good and then just pour off the resulting, cloudy water?

Yes, that's what I'd do. Just enough to stir up the detritus and get it out of the sand you're putting back. As long as you're rinsing in SW your likelihood of "killing organisms" is pretty low. Also I'd shake the rock out in that water to get rid of any remaining detritus on them as well before using them in the new tank.

 

[runway1]

DJ, I presume in step 2 you already had water in the bucket, since you have corals on top. Was it tank water or newly mixed? Then....you took the 65-75% in step 4 and put it on top - correct?

Thanks for your help!

 

[runway1]

Good points, Phyl. Thank you.

 

[djlynch]

I used kent marine salt mix buckets (7 gallon), and first i filled them up halfway and put LR in it with corals on top, adjusting how much water to use to fill it up. All the water that i put in the buckets was from the tank. When i said use 65-75% of the tank water, i mean total (after filling up 3 of the buckets w/water and rock and my 20H for fish. that was around 65%) I left about 2-3 inches of water above my sand line in the tank and used the water in the buckets and holding tank go in the 125. Once you start to get that low, the water is brown and murky.

HTH

 

[djlynch]

oh yeah, phyl made a great point. this is the perfect time to scrub any lr that might have any troublesome algae on it... i had some bubble algae that had to go

 

[runway1]

BIG help. Thanks all!!