gonna start a new tank.....WHAT TO DO? good dillema

[AIR-FX]

ok so me and my wife are house hunting and one of the things i wanted to add to a new house is a 150 gal tank. the boss ok'd it cause she is starting to like the feel a tank brings to a home(not to mention my 2yr old son loves to watch the fish instead of tv). so an awesome deal fell into my lap and i couldnt pass it up. i bought a 150gal yesterday pre drilled. woooohoooo !4x2xtall. i currently have a 72 bow front that i have had some success with especially now that i have a 6 bulb t5. sps grows,lps grows,but i have had problems with candy canes,favias,and acans.....they always die off. also my palys and zoas grow slow along with blastos. i have good coraline growth on my rock,pods are a plenty and xenia grow like wildfire. obviously i must have inbalences in my water chemistry. in the past i have only tested once inawhile due to the fact i always did a 15 gal water change every wekk n a half.

so heres my question........do i take my old sand and all the waterr and transfer it to the new tank once i get it all set up and just add some more rock and fresh salt water(arc water) ....then just r-acclimate fish and corals to new tank? OR would it be best to use new sand and water with my established live rock and let it cycle ? will letting the new tank start over and cycle help with my corals growing later on?

i know i have plenty of test kits to buy and must display better tank husbandry once i get my dream tank set up and running....THATS FOR SURE !
THANKS TO ALL ANY ANY.....who chime in with their thoughts on helping me decide whats the best way to go ! pro's and cons

 

[EllieSuz]

Some good questions there. I've upgraded to slightly larger tanks twice and since they needed to be in the same spot, I moved the rock, fish and water into the new tank, added new water, carefully matched to temperature and salinity and moved the fish right in. Neither time did I have any cycle. Here's the trick; throw away the old sand, and build your rockwork on a bare bottom and add new sand gradually later. I have a method for adding new sand that keeps water clouding to a minimum and let me know if you want those details. I think you'll get some advice about washing your old sand and re-using it, which is an option too. I just didn't want to take the chance that stirring up the old sand would cause a cycle.

 

[RoscoPColtrane]

I would rinse your sand well with old tank water, put it in the new tank with your live rock and add new water. In my experience you will not have a new cycle but you could wait a few days and test to be sure.

It sounds like your Acans and Favias may not be doing well because of too much light. I have a 6x39 T5 on my 120 and have to acclimate new corals to the light very slowly or they will bleach out, especially favias.

Good luck with your new tank!

 

[tmz]

I would ditch the sand and use new water and sand if you want sand.. Recuring the rock in bins and checking for phospahte leaching would also be useful.

 

[AIR-FX]

tom....wont using new sand and new water make the tank cycle?

 

[cardiffgiant]

I've switched over to new tanks twice. The first time the 1-2" sand bed was only 3 months old so I moved it and was not pleased with ht e results. Things were less stable within the first few weeks. I got nuisance algae for a couple of months, cyno outbreaks, and lost some coral. When I moved my 90 from one house to another, I ditched the sand bed and reseeded a new bed with a cup of the old sand. I still experienced some new tank symptoms and coral loss, but no where near as bad as when I moved and reused an entire sad bed.

My concerns with moving the sand bed were that I would 1) stir a lot of pollutants that have settled in to the sand, and 2) end up killing a lot of microfauna in the old sand bed and generating a lot of new pollutants.

I saved as much of the old water as I could when I moved my tank. It worked out to something like 70G of old water and 80G of new.

 

[NirvanaFan]

There isn't much, if any, bacteria in the water column, so that shouldn't cause a problem. Stirring up the sand bed (over an inch or so) is generally considered a bad thing. You can release pollutants and cause problems. Rinsing it (in fresh water) will probably destroy the bacteria anyways, and surely any pods in it. You may as well start off with new sand and avoid the potential problems.

 

[SkiFletch]

Yeah, water is not the issue here. So long as you match the salinity, temperature, and to a lesser extent alk/calc/mag, you can swap fish/corals/rocks/whatever without worrying about the tank "cycling". I've upgraded and moved tanks a LOT over the last few years. When you have the option of setting up the new tank before moving livestock it is of course the "easiest" (it's always a royal PITA though ). First, do yourself a favor, invest in a bunch of 5g buckets with lids from HD/lowes/wherever and get a friend with a truck (or if you have one, great). If possible, it's best to do this in one shot.

At the new house, you'll first have to setup the tank, make sure it holds water, all the plumbing is right, etc. Then mix some seawater in it and get it up to temp/salinity. If you're making this move in the summer, match temp. If doing it in winter, make it a little cooler. Get yourself a big old rubbermaid container that can hold say 1/3rd-1/2 the water volume, as well as a 15gal rubbermaid. You'll probably also want a nice mag 5/7 with oh maybe 15 feet or so of hose fitted to the outlet and a big filter bad for the inlet. Take maybe 1 cup of old sand from your old tank and stuff it in the corner of the new one. Cover it with a weighted clear plastic container with holes poked in it if the flow is too much and stirring it up... That's all the old sand you'll want to use. You can either re-use your old stuff after you wash it, or get new sand. Either way is fine but you don't want to take all your old sand over. That will leech all sorts of phosphates back into the water column and lead to a nuisance algae mess. One cup is nice though for all the critters that live in the sand.

Once that's done, turn off your sump/etc in the display and using your magdrive with hose, drain say 1/3rd-1/2 the volume of the tank; some into the 15g rubbermaid which is hopefully right next to the new 150gal, and the rest into the larger storage container. Set both to maintain temp with smaller heaters and stir both with powerheads. In the 15g rubbermaid try and put a larger pump with larger filter on it, or hang a filter sock above it and pump into that. You're gonna use this as a rinse bucket.

Then take your army of 5g buckets to the old tank, drain some water into the buckets one by one and start placing your rocks in them. Fill them just enough to mostly cover the rocks and try not to stack them too high in the bucket. Bring your fish too if you can, but not in a bucket with rocks . The magdrive will make this process much faster/easier. Load the buckets into the truck, drive over to the new house, carry them inside to the new DT. Now, take the rocks out one at a time and give them a good shake first in the 5g bucket, then dip in the 15gal rubbermaid, and shake again. Try to get detritus off them. Finally, put them into the DT and stack as you please on the glass bottom. By leaving as much detritus behind in the 5g bucket and the 15g bin, you'll mitigate the phosphate issues you're going to have. You might have to pause and have a beer to allow the 15g bin to filter itself with whatever mechanical filtration you've setup if it gets really nasty and full of detritus. As you stack rocks, if you need more water in the DT (which is only partially full), pump it back in from your larger rubbermaid with fresh-mixed seawater.

Once all the rocks/corals are in, put the fish in the tank, run some carbon for a couple days, and LOTS of GFO. You can then either wash your old sand in tapwater and re-use it, slowly adding it around the base as elliesuz suggests, or add new sand. Either way, do the addition relatively slowly to not create too much dust/silt moving around in the water column and ticking your livestock off.

As long as you can do this all with the rocks spending limited time out of water, you won't have cycling issues. Detritus and phosphates are much more your enemy in this process. Since you're moving to a bigger tank, I might suggest picking up a tang if you're planning on adding one to help eat some of the nuisance algae that will surely want to rear it's ugly head.

Last piece of advice, towels... LOTS of towels. Ask your friends for old/crappy ones if you even THINK you might not have enough. Lay them everywhere you'll be walking and carrying seawater. I promise, you'll be glad you did. Or at least your wife will, which means you won't get slapped for taking that beer break

 

[Seaweed Brain]

What type of bulb combo do you run on your fixture and how long are they on? Also where do you keep your acans, favias, and zoas and other corals that you do not succeed with? In my experience those corals are not to hard to keep but it could be that the light could be too intense depending on wher they are. flow could also be a factor.

 

[saltyscotsman]

Hi Kevin Salty here good luck with the new tank I still have your bucket if you need any help to move or make your stand give me a call only to happy to help,I used a 40gal frag tank for sump-refuge worked out great

 

[saltyscotsman]

I used a ASM-G3 skimer works great with my 180gal

 

[kelso1980]

this may be a bit off-topic but before you set up your new tank, would you be able to set up a fish room or drill down to your new basement? I know when I went from an under-the-tank sump to a basement sump, it greatly increased my water quality. Not only because I had a larger volume of water, but I had more room for needed equipment and it was easier to do water changes (so i did them more often)
So if there was a place in your new house to put the tank and make a fish room, I would recommend that. I found that if I go out of my way to make things easier for tank husbandry, the better my tank looks in the long run. Just a suggestion. Good luck on the househunting and new tank setup!

 

[tmz]

tom....wont using new sand and new water make the tank cycle?

The rock should be enough to get it started.
The old sand while serving a surface area for bacteria is usually a problem for nutients and potential organics breakdown once you move it . If anything I might use a small amount of it ,say acup or two with new sand to seed it. Bactria grow fast .The water doesn't bring many if any any nitifying or denitrifying bacteria with it , mostly just organics , nitrogen and phosphorus and perhaps pathogens and toxins.

In any case monitoring ammonia for a week or so on the new tank is prudent.