Need advice...Bare 75 gallon...but hopefully not for long!

[bassetbros]

Hey Ya'll!

First off I'd like to say that there seems to be a lot of very knowledgable people around here so after reading some of the posts in this forum I think I've finally come to the right place so here goes.

I currently have a 15 gallon FOWLR with about 25lbs of live rock and 20 lbs of sand along with a few turbo snails and hermit crab that has been going for approximately 2 years. I just bought a 75 gallon tank and am planning on putting everything from the 15 into it.

1. Do you guys think I'll have to go through a cycling process with this changeover?
2. How long after the change over do you suggest waiting until stocking it with a few fish?
3. Should I just let the lr, sand, snails, and crab take care of the cycle for me? I've got 2 penguin 330's I plan on using for filtration from a previous cichlid tank (that's righ...another cichlid guy sees the light!) and can run the filter that's currently on the 15 gallon as well, though it won't be permanent.
4. Assuming at least a couple of fish listed below are feasible, which one's do you think I should add first?


As far as inhabitants for the 75, I'm looking at the following fish and would like any advice (good/bad) you could provide:

Royal Gramma Basslet
Harlequin Bass
Yellow Longnose Butterfly
Pearlscale Butterfly
Blonde Naso Tang
Aurora Watchman Goby
Yellow Watchman Goby
Longnose Hawkfish
Six Line Wrasse
Blue Sided Fairy Wrasse

I know I don't have the capacity for all of these fish and will definately have to cull some of them but, these are the ones I'm interested in so maybe we can start chopping from there. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks and God Bless,
Basset

 

[sdellin]

I just did this with a 15 to a 55-gal tank. I took all the sand, rock, fish and inverts and put them all in the 55-gal tank. I ran the new canister filter and the old canister filter from the 15-gal tank together on the 55-gal tank for a couple weeks. There seemed to be enough biological filtration in that setup to keep me from cycling. I don't know about a 15 to a 75-gal.

I was wondering why you don't have any fish in the tank.

One thing I did notice was that later, after the first couple weeks, I added a bunch of dead rock (probably too much at once) and I got a bloom of brown/rust algae over everything. It did not start to cycle again, but I did have to clean it often.

LFS told me that you should not add too much dead rock at once because the first algae to grow on dead rock is the brown stuff, so that caused my bloom. I got the same opinion about that on this site. It's under control now and not a problem anymore. May be best to get more live rock to bulid your reef and not too much dead rock for base, but I'm no expert, just sharing my experience.

 

[SpikeAZ]

Six Line Wrasse
Royal Gramma Basslet

These are great fish IMO. They're going into my new 75 I'm setting up.

 

[sdellin]

Six Line Wrasse
Royal Gramma Basslet

These are great fish IMO. They're going into my new 75 I'm setting up.

I've had a royal gramma now for awhile, just added a six-line wrasse. I love them both.

 

[bassetbros]

The inhabitants in my 15 gallon (2 unidentified blennies and 3 skilletfish caught out of Mobile Bay) didn't fare so well after we moved from our old house. The only things that survived were my snails and crab. It was more of an experimental tank to see if I wanted to make the change from Cichlids to salt water.

Thanks for the input and God Bless,
Basset