My friend had a 40 gallon set up established for 4-5 months, different corals, and a few fish. After he had his tank for about a month I bought a tank (a 10 gallon set up that quickly turned to a 20). We both live in the dorms, so, over christmas break, we had to move our tanks back to our houses...As pain staking as it was everything went fine. My friend had actually bought a stand and canopy, housing a 175 W MH and two Actinic PCs, for his 40 gallon, but the dimensions for the stand were, unfortuantely, wrong for his tank, so he deciding to keep the stand a buy a new tank.
He went from a 40 to a 29 with out a hitch, just a little extra water. And my 20 stayed just fine as well. The tanks were both set up at our houses for 1 month, my 20 with a pair of black ocellaris and the later addition of a bicolor blenny, and his 29 with a pair of percs.
So now it is time to move our tanks back into the dorms, however, with the small shared rooms that we recieve, a stand is not very practical, so my friend decided, since we already had all the equipment needed for an easy 15 set up, to downgrade again (temporarily) into a 15 gallon. The sand bed was stirred in the process of moving. That was last Saturday, two days ago, and much to our dismay, he has lost one of his clownfish and the other one looks rather unhealthy...
This Saturday is my turn to move my tank, that only difference is that I had planned to move into his old 40 gallon.
My 40 gallon will consist of over half full of uncycled water (so it would kind of be like a 55% water change). It will also have about 30-40 pounds of base rock added to my 20 pounds of LR. My sand bed will be stirred, but about 50% of it will be new sand.
We are fairly certain that his tank cycled/is cycling again, but I don't understand why it would cycle now and not cycle when I moved my 20, or when he moved his 40 down to a 29. This is the big question, but other questions that I have are:
Is my tank, during the upgrade, going to cycle?
Is there some precautionary things that I should do?
He went from a 40 to a 29 with out a hitch, just a little extra water. And my 20 stayed just fine as well. The tanks were both set up at our houses for 1 month, my 20 with a pair of black ocellaris and the later addition of a bicolor blenny, and his 29 with a pair of percs.
So now it is time to move our tanks back into the dorms, however, with the small shared rooms that we recieve, a stand is not very practical, so my friend decided, since we already had all the equipment needed for an easy 15 set up, to downgrade again (temporarily) into a 15 gallon. The sand bed was stirred in the process of moving. That was last Saturday, two days ago, and much to our dismay, he has lost one of his clownfish and the other one looks rather unhealthy...
This Saturday is my turn to move my tank, that only difference is that I had planned to move into his old 40 gallon.
My 40 gallon will consist of over half full of uncycled water (so it would kind of be like a 55% water change). It will also have about 30-40 pounds of base rock added to my 20 pounds of LR. My sand bed will be stirred, but about 50% of it will be new sand.
We are fairly certain that his tank cycled/is cycling again, but I don't understand why it would cycle now and not cycle when I moved my 20, or when he moved his 40 down to a 29. This is the big question, but other questions that I have are:
Is my tank, during the upgrade, going to cycle?
Is there some precautionary things that I should do?
