Oh Boy! its a big one.. for me.

[RockinSmall]

I know this forum is for 180 gallons and up, but my total water volume will be that, so i hope i can stay =)


I havent owned a large reef in eyars, and back when I did, i wasnt doing it alone, it was a project that my boyfriend and i shared. But, I just bought a 150g tank stand and canopy and it is sitting in my living room. I have the plumbing, mp40, return pump, and new bulbs on the way.

My first question is about transfering my 75 gallon over to the 150.

I have old sand that i have washed and had drying for the last couple months in buckets. I just wanna make sure my order of events sound appropriate. I figured I would go ahead and add the sand, prolly do a 3 to 5 inch sand bed. I imagine this tank will be up for 2-3 years until i move. The reason i may do the deap sand bed is b/c the tank is soo tall and i am only 5-2 and i am worried about not being able to reach far down to keep it clean.

So first i add the old sand, then i have kept about 40 pounds of dry rock in my garage that i will set in there and then take about 20 pounds out of the current 75 gallon tank, fill it up with water and begin the cycle.

I wanted to just transfer everything over in a day, old rock and all corals, but i am afraid that the old sand is still a bit funky and will cause a harsh cycle. Not sure if the sps can handle that.

Sump/fuge- i have some really large pieces of crushed coral and i thought about adding 3-4 inches of that to my sump/fuge (in one tank) so that i can give good breeding grounds for copepods and such... is this a good or bad idea?

A;lso, i thought about getting so bio-spira to facilitate the potential cycle....

What are your thoughts?

 

[cbort]

Hey Lindsay, i have moved 8 times in the last 4 years and never had any problems until the most recent move when i cracked my tank

Are you going to be using live sand out of your 75g? if so i would clean your old sand as good as possible. Best way i have found is to get a cheap large bowl and a couple 5 gallon buckets. Fill the large bowl about 1/2 full with your old sand and place in a tub or sink. Slowly run the water in the bowl and run your hands through the sand allowing the water to cascade over the edges of the bowl, but not erratically enough to make sand go over the edges of the bowl. While you are stirring up the sand, the "crap and debree" will go over the sides of the bowl and your water should get nice and clear pretty quickly. Dump the excess water out and pour the now clean sand into a clean 5g bucket or straight into your 150g tank. If you do this with all of your old sand, most all of the "crap and debree" will not make it into your system and you will only have a small cycle.

When i went from my 40g to my 80g, i actually filled the new 80g tank up with fresh salt water, same salinity and temp as my 40g keeping fish and corals in small buckets. Then i transferred my rock and placed my fish and corals into the tank. Basically it was like a 50% water change. It took a bit only about 4-5 hours for all coral to adjust and begin to open up. I then took my sand out of the 40g and washed it clean and added it to the 80g along with some brand new sand. Overall I did not have much of a cycle. Stress was minimal.

 

[username in use]

I would either keep your sand at 1" or a full 6", in between is like no mans land. Not deep enough for a DSB, and too deep to keep clean.

I would add your sand, and a little bit of rock and let it sit for a week or two and see what happens. If it looks like all is well, start adding rock and some of the easier corals over the course of a few days while monitoring the water, once all seems good add the rest of the rock and the difficult corals and you should be fine.