Okay. The front half of the tank - with 4-5 inches of sand, was incredibly clean. my nassaurius (sp?) snails and sand goby did a great job keeping it clean.
The back half - in, around, and under the LR - what a mess. Terribly dirty. I'm glad I scooped up the front half first, I'm using that in the new tank. But once I got the LR moved to the front, and started the back half, I knew right away that very little of that was going to be used.
I'll probably scoop it all up after I have the fish and softies and anemones relocated, and clean it somehow. There's too much to just pitch. But it's in a serious need of cleaning
Moving the older LR from the bottom of the pile did make the water a mess, but the XP3 cleared things up pretty quick.
I scooped all the sand I could last night into tupperware containers, one at a time, and left those site on the bottom overnight. Then this morning I just had to pull those out. Didn't make much of a mess.
Update - I've moved all the LR that doesn't have anything growing on it, all the sand from the front and a bit off the surface of the back. I've also got the Filstar xp3 moved. That leaves about 10 rocks in the old tank with various softies and anemones, and the 14 fish.
The fish aren't very happy without much LR to hide in/around. I might throw some decorations I have in there from when I first started so they don't stress too much. Honestly, some of them seem to like it - there's lots more swimming room now, and my 3 chromis are schooling back and forth... The clowns which usually hang out behind the overflow box are out and about too.
Tomorrow I'll drain the old tank into a large container (for emergency purposes), and start acclimating the fish. Then the corals and anomones.
Once those are moved, I'll tear down the sump and move all that. Then the canopy with the MH.
What an incredible about of work to move a tank 30 feet.
Cool thing today, was that I found my starfish, which I've had for 9 months, but haven't seen in about 5
ALSO, a peppermint shrimp I haven't seen since the day I put him in showed up. Wierd.
I also found a bristle work that was about 10 inches long. I shrieked a little when I turned a rock over and it started crawling up my arm. Gack.
Oh, and regarding extra water. Now that its in the basement instead of the dining rm, I was able to go out and get a 50 gallon trash can (plastic of course) and hooked up my RODI system right there. Luckily, there's also an open 4" drain pipe right there by the tank too. So for the first time I can do a PWC without a single bucket. W00t!
I should have about 50 gallons ready to go tomorrow when I move the fish, plus the water from the old tank, which I'll keep on hand should things go really bad (but let's hope they don't).