Upgrading from 55 to 125 or >

[casperinmd]

Ok, I have had my 55gal tank for 5 years now and now that I am satisfied with it being extremely stable, I want more.

Prolly a 125 or a 155 bow front I just saw at the LFS. When I do this upgrade, will I have to "start over"? Then when it matures, move my current tank inhabitants over? or can I somehow maybe do a water change on my 55, take that old water and put it in the new 155 with new salt mixed water, keep it filtering somehow for a month then do one more water change and then dump my old 55 into the new 155?

I am going to plan this one out so I don't mess up, so any ideas would be great.

Currently using a wet/dry, berlin turbo skimmer, 2 rio pwr heads, about 50ish lbs of live rock and crushed coral for the bed. Have a couple crabs and snails, feather dusters, Unicorn Tang, Yellow Tang, Volitile Lion, damsel, 2 clowns. All are very healthy. 2 VHO lights and a blue actinic for lights.

Thanks

 

[Hara]

wow, you must be a patient individual...five years before an upgrade! (my husband would love you) anyway, we just upgraded from a 150 to a 175 and what we did was let the new tank cycle with the additional live rock we needed, then put as much of the old tank water in as was feasible. put the fish in buckets, acclimatized them and while they were "soaking" we moved the rest of the live rock over, did our landscaping, then added the fish.

You would not want to change out the water in the 55 prior to the time you are moving everything over, you would stress out the fish too much I would think.

Other opinions may vary

 

[tyler]

i'd go with a deep sand bed instead of the crushed coral and leave off the wet dry.

 

[d9hp]

I was just thinking of that. Man, sounds like a cool tank with a Lion and some Clowns together. Thats my 2nd and 3rd favorite fish.

 

[loganj]

I think Hara is right on target...you'll need more rock...maybe another 80-100 lbs. Get the new tank set up...and use it to cure the new rock, cycling the tank in the process. With that amount of LR, you won't need the bio balls in the wet/dry. I wouldn't use the CC substrate. Go with sugar size aragonite sand instead such as the Southdown brand from Home Depot or Aragamax by CaribSea. You might want to add some powerheads also. Try to keep the flow at least 10x the tank size ie 1250 gph for a 125g tank. Maxi Jet powerheads are, IMO, the best thing going. Another option, since you seem like a patient person, is to get 100lbs of dry base rock and use your cured LR to top it off. The base rock, in time, will become LR. You could use the "fishless" method to cycle the tank (see aritcles link on home page). Anyway...just a few ideas.
Logan J

 

[michealprater]

www.eastcoastclams.com has great deals on live rock.

 

[casperinmd]

Great, thanks for all the replies and help. I will head to sand no problem, and as for the sump, that works too. What do most people use? A small aquariam? Big rubber tub?

Ideas on a sump? I will now search the site for ideas but if anyone has a great idea, I would love to hear it.

 

[PrettyFishies]

You can use a a wet/dry w/o the bio balls...
You can make one your self...
You can buy a pre-made one online...

The cheapest is to make it, DIY... It would involve drilling a hole for a bulkhead, adding baffles...and whatever other modifications you would want... It's the cheapest....

I personally wanted to buy a pre made...but they are expensive ($250) ...so I bought a used wet-dry from ebay for $76