The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Without adding sand from the main, too, I believe you would still have to cycle it. I believe that most of the nitrifying bacteria is in the sand itself.
The water doesn't bear the weight of the cycle. The rock, substrate, filter media and glass does. The water alone won't allow you to skip the cycle. Now if you were to move your existing contents into a new system you could likely forego the cycle time.
A better way to do it, if you want to take shortcuts, is to use some live rock, some live sand, and some water. Depending on the size of the second tank, this might work, and this might not work. If you plan on setting up a small nano tank then it should work great.
Thanks I will do a PWC and see how that does. If I use that filter from the 55 and the water. Would that be good? In a coral Farm do you want sand on the bottom? Also What Kind of fish or Cleaner Would I want?
For a frag tank, depending on the type of corals you're interested in, I wouldn't do a sand bottom. There's no sand in my stock tank. Too easy to trap detritus in there. Easier to clean without it. Also depending on the corals you're keeping you'll want mad flow in there and that's easier without the sand. I'm a big fan of a SSB for my displays but keep my frag tanks BB.
Will it only be a frag tank? I would short cycle that as you're not going to have the same bioload as with a fish tank.