Upgrading to a Larger Aquarium

[alex787]

so where i put the fish and coral will the tank cycle

[Gregcoyote]

Can you run the systems side by side for a while?

[alex787]

i can not because i am moving to a new house soon

[huma-huma]

this is a simple solution... simply setup the 240 and fill it with new sw(and sand if you want) then let it stabilize overnight, next day, transfer over the live rock and all filtering equipment and start acclimating the fish. if the setup on the 55 was handling the bio-load, theres no reason why it shouldnt handle it in a 240...of course youd want to work on adding in more live rock and beefing up the filtration/powerheads/ etc... but if you need to upgrade quickly, this would work.. (just dont kick up the sand too much in the 55)

[alex787]

huma-huma thank you for the helpful info. i do not want any of my live stock to die i have invested about 2k to 4k of money on the live stock. your right i do need to get more live rock i have already put an order for 300lb of Pukani live rock

[huma-huma]

That's a good move no sense over complicating it right?

[cabezon]

Exactly, all the "live" this and "cycle" that...

The quesion is, do you have enough bacteria to eat the fsh waste?

Are you losing some with the sand being lost/washed? Yes. Most likely it will not affect the levels all that much when you are increasing water volume by four.

"Live sand" also has worms, bugs and other critters. That's why I say save some. What you don't want is the sulphur and malm that collect at the bottom of the sand bed. The sand itself is pretty negligable. New, old. Doesn't matter. I have 5 fish in a 125. How much bioload is that? Nothing, compaired to 3 in a 33 solana. Stop overthinking it.

[huma-huma]

That is a very good point with the billows, but in the same sense the 4x increase in water volume will prob negate any ammo or trite spike...if there even was any.