Cycle after moving

[Dayson]

So my brother just moved his 65g DT into my house in TN from FL. We have live rock and sand that was moved in 5g buckets with the tank, under water of course. We just filled the tank back up last night with fresh water and placed the sand/rocks in the tank.

We were able to successfully get a picasso clown, yasha goby, possum wrasse, and a couple shrimp up to TN and they are currently in a QT tank where they have been for a couple days while we set up the DT. My questions is...

Will the DT need to cycle after the move and do you believe that these fish need to stay in QT for a while before introducing them back into the DT where they have been for the past 1-4 years?

I'm new to the hobby but have a seasoned vet as a brother to help get me up and going.

 

[pyithar]

you'll probably have an ammonia spike after disturbing the sandbed. but i think the cycle will be quick. when the ammonia test comes out zero, you can put the fish back into the display tank.

 

[MondoBongo]

typically it is advised to chuck the sandbed during a tank move, since it can cause all sorts of problems depending on its age, and what it contains.

i just recently moved a bare bottom tank across town, it has loads of detritus in the bottom of it. i keep it that way on purpose for feeding the inhabitants.

anyways. i drained the tank most of the way down until the siphon wouldn't pull anymore, drained the sump completely. tagged and bagged the livestock, and put rocks and pvc pipes in a bucket full of tank water.

at the destination i set everything up, and filled it with freshly made and heated salt water. there was a lot of nasty kicked up from the fill, got the sump and skimmer online, gave it about an hour to clear while floating the bags to temp acclimate, then put everyone in the pool.

the only thing i saw was a blip in the ammonia the next morning. i'm still not sure if this was an actual spike, or if i just screwed up the test, or misread the result as it was early morning before work and i was in a hurry. if it was a legitimate reading, it would have been around less than .10ppm, so almost off the bottom end of the scale for API test kit.

i came back after work, tested again and this time used a second test with a control of freshly mixed salt water. both were a resounding 0 for ammonia.

now i'm not sure how that will translate with migrating a sand bed. when i move my main system later this month, i am planning on fresh sand in the new tank, and only reusing a couple of cups of the current sand to help it seed the new tank.

so tldr; i would expect some form of minor cycle. how much and how long are a question mark though. it could be a very brief, and small, spike like i saw, or it could be longer. i would probably consider some kind of probiotic like SeaChem Stability or Dr. Tim's to help coax any cycle along. with any luck though, as pyithar said, it should be a fairly short event.

 

[Dayson]

Thanks for the responses. The sand has now been in the tank for 36 hours. I will run a full panel of tests tonight. If i do get an ammonia spike would you expect this to have already happened?

 

[MondoBongo]

it's tough to say. in a perfect world it would have happened and gone, assuming that the spike wasn't too large, and the bacteria wasn't too damaged by the transport.

if you retest and everything looks good, you might want to see about getting some pure ammonia and dosing the tank. get it to 1ppm, and see how long it takes to process that all over and go back to 0 for ammonia and nitrite.

conversely you could also try adding a small portion of the livestock and keeping a close eye on the levels with your tests to see if it spikes again.

 

[Frozenguy]

From everything I've read, the ammonia spike due to disturbance and die off will happen rather quickly within a day. However returning to normal feeding once moved can cause a delayed ammonia spike due to the nitrification bacteria not being set back up to their stable levels to handle a bio load like that.

So feed lightly.

I just moved my 80 gallon + 29 gallon sump two days ago. I had 2.5"-3" sand bed in DT. I scooped the sand out and put it in buckets.

I made sure not to disturb the sand bed at first. I drained my water to 1/3 level and took out rocks and live stock. Then continued draining to about an inch of water above sand.

Then I scooped into buckets and discarded water in the sand buckets and in the tank. Effectively rinsing the sand in old tank water.

I have had 0 ammonia or nitrite spike. The whole tank was set up in January or so with good LR and new bagged LS.

Being that your sand is really old, I could see an ammonia spike. But as long as you kept those rocks and sand somewhat alive, the cycle should be real small on the order of several days.

 

[Dayson]

Thanks for all the responses. Look like the fish will be going back into the DT tonight after I double check the water.