Moving to a new tank

[avoidtheboyd]

Ok so I've had a biocube set up for a little over a year now and things are pretty good. I have a nuvo 16 that i wanna switch to for aesthetics and a little more wider tank instead of the cube.
Heres my problem, I have a goby, shrimp and a small clown in my cube right now along with an assortment of different corals. I want to set up the nuvo and transfer everything but I don't know how to go about it.

I was thinking about having new live sand in the nuvo along with dry rock seeded with some live rock because a couple pieces in my cube aren't very aesthetically pleasing. If i let it cycle completely before adding everything, even after its cycled i can't just add everything in my cube to the nuvo since i don't want to overdo the bioload.

However is there a way to move everything over while adding a couple pieces of dry rock and new sand so there isn't a huge cycle or crash?

 

[jsnrho82]

Admittedly, I do not have experience with either of these setups, but if you have any filter media from the bio cube that you could transfer along with the rock it would be a huge help. Basically anywhere bacteria can colonize would be good to move over.

 

[mattgumaer]

I moved from a 90 to a 180. I used new sand and moved the old rock over from the 90, adding it to a a bunch of new Marco rock that had been in the 180 with circulating salt water for a little while. Everything went remarkably smoothly. My advice would be abandon the sand and keep the rock. I don't know how much rock you have but, generally speaking, I think the rock is largely your biological filtration (not sure if your cube has the little bio balls or whether you're using them). In terms of abandoning the sand, my fear was disturbing the layers in the 90 and either: 1) releasing nasties deep down in the sand; and/or 2) exposing a bunch of life in the old sand to new/different conditions by disturbing the layers in the process of the move and causing a die off in the new tank. My sand bed in the 90 was fairly deep so that I added to my concern.

The other thing I would do is set aside ample time for the move. You don't want to feel rushed during the process if you can help it. Good luck. With sufficient time, it's not too painful a process. I accidentally fragged a couple of corals in the process and used the move as an opportunity to remove some peppermint shrimp which developed a fondness for my LPS and even caught a bad crab, which had picked off a couple of fish I think, in the process.

Matt

 

[ghatter]

My advice would be abandon the sand and keep the rock.

This ^^^. When I moved from a Biocube to a 50g tank I used all new sand. Since your tanks are close to the same size you could just move the rock and then add a little more if needed to make it look good.