help need advice asap! moving from smaller to larger!

[Grnorton]

I have had a bio cube 24 set up for about 8 months with 2 clowns, and several corals. all healthy and no issues with the tank. params have been perfect for about 6.5 months. I set up my new 90 gallon tank with live rock from my old tank, scrubbed and cleaned dry rock, and some water from the old tank. I saw a spike in ammonia and then nitrites and then nitrates over about 3 days and now im 0ppm ammonia and nitrite and my nitrates are at about 5ppm. i used new sand with 1 cup of sand from my old tank. If i add new fish, all small 2-3" fish will i be ok? thank you!

 

[ExpensiveHobby]

I would think you are OK. The live rock and live sand you transferred probably cut down the length of the cycle.

 

[Raoul5Duke]

The fish should be fine. How are the corals doing? They would be stressed first.

 

[Mishri]

Just make sure you acclimate them like you would if you just brought them home from the local fish store. Even if it's same salinity, temps it's better to be sure they are eased into new water conditions.

I tend to do my acclimations a lot faster than other people recommend. I think too long is actually more stressful for livestock. I'd put a little fish in a small bucket or large bowl, with old tank water and add cups of water over 30-45 minutes until you have about 3x as much new water as old.. then dump it in. That's my method anyway.. some people like drip buckets and heaters and things...

 

[Jocko]

Oh this to me is like the perfect new tank set up scenario. You've already got true live rock and you've got some livestock. You are thinking about this correctly. Your goal is to be reading 0's on the tests for the new tank. If you're at zero, then you're good to bring something over from the old tank. Just keep looking for those zeros and moving something over every day or 2. You've got good bacteria populations already from the original tank, so they won't take very long to adapt to the small changes each time you add something.

I'd probably start moving the corals first since they don't require any acclimation (assuming your tanks aren't wildly different in temp/salinity). Plus they don't produce as much waste as a couple of clowns!

Not exactly related to your original question, but you'll probably want to start your corals out on the bottom of the new tank if the lights are significantly different from what you have on the original tank.

Good luck and congrats on the upgrade!