Upgrading to 75g

[vanceny]

For those who have gone through the process of upgrading thier tanks some advise would be great. Currently have a 29g (dsb)with a 20g sump/refugium. I plan on upgrading to a 75g with a 55g sump. Here's my plan:
1. Get the new tank situated and all the plumbing done and tested.
2. Add new sand for a dsb (probably south down). Wait for storm to settle.
3. Take sand from establish tank and add to the tank. (question, how much shoudl I use? Can I just use all of it and add new sand to fill in?)
4. Move live rock from existing tank to new tank.
5. Move refugium live stock to new refugium. (Can I reuse the sand in here?)
6. move Corals and fish to new tank.

All of this spread across about 2 weeks. How does this sound? I was also thinking of using the water from my water changes to add to the tank. All of this to possibly avoid another cycle. Not sure if reusing any of the sand or water will help with this.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MBuck]

Hi! I am new but just changed over from a 20g L to a 58g cube. I put new sand in, added almost all of my LR, with water from my qt that has been setup for months.
I only had 3 fish to worry about and left it go for about a week, I then moved my fish into the qt, took all the LS out of the 20g, added that to the tank, along with most of the water from the est setup, let the sand settle and checked wtaer parameters for a couple days and then added the fish. Did this over about 2 weeks also. Everyone is doing wonderful!

I would say as much water, and LS that you can add, would be very beneficial to your new setup. The new sand will eventually become live, and the rock you already have will help with filtration, and seeding your new sand.

HTH!

 

[vanceny]

Thanks for the advice. I was just wondering if there was a cycle.

 

[CH]

I upgraded very similarly to you, 29 to 75
I set up the new tank, added some new sand, then added about 50gallons of water. Then, over the course of a couple of weeks I did water changes, taking water out of the 29, putting it in the 75, and taking new water out of the 75 and putting into the 29 (basically I used the 75 as my "newly mixed water" source)
I would do about 5 gallons evey day. I also started mixing sand between the two, in a similar fashion. After a couple of weeks, the two tanks were theoretically the same, the water has been thouroughly mixed between the two, as well as the sand. I also added new dead base rock to the old tank, and put some of the live rock into the new tank.

I never really got any kind of cycle, because of the way I did it, theoretically all I was doing was adding 75 gallons of water to my existing 29, if you can think of it that way. I didn't add new live rock or sand, it was all just dry, so there wasn't any kind of die off or whatever. It's like my 29 just stretched out and had more room.

 

[Alaskan Reefer]

I wouldn't use too much of the old sand in the new tank or fuge personally. Just a cup or two of the old sand (or even just a piece or two of live rock) will seed the new sand, and you won't be dumping in too much of what the old sand has collected in fish poo. I'd use any of the old water I could, but wouldn't worry too much abou tit -- as CH mentioned you're just adding crisp water to existing (assumed clean) water so that shouldn't hurt anything. You can expect a cycle of some sort (unavoidable), but as long as the new skimmer is adequate and running good and you've got some chaeto or other macro in the fuge to suck up ammonia your livestock should do fine. I upgraded from 75 to 125 in basically the same way. Just be cautious of course as you add new live rock to fill the new tank -- either all at once before you do anything else and let it cycle or one to two pieces at a time therafter...