New Tank, new sand w/ old water and LR

[Philtron]

Moving from a 72g bow front to a 80g rimless... tank should be in friday...

I will be using a new sand bed as i dont really like the black caribsea sand i originally started with... When adding a new sand bed w/ the old water and LR does the tank go through a cycle again? and if not, how long should i let the tank run before i start adding my fish? Appreciate the feed back.

 

[andylee]

There will almost certainly be a mini-cycle. Hardier fish may tolerate it. What are the alternatives with regard to the fish: leave them in the old tank? If you have a good alternative to putting them into the new system, I would wait until the spike either finishes or you are comfortable that it's not going to happen.

 

[myblock175]

did the black sand give you problems? because I'm thinking about using that for my new tank that I'm starting soon

 

[piranhapat]

I would add some bacterial additive. New Sand going to make tank cloudy. So I would wait a day or two so everything settles. I used stability by seachem never lost a fish. Adding some bacteria for bio load will help. Only thing is how many fish you adding in one time. If you have a lot of fish I would add some and just keep adding bacterial each day. So you have a bio load and new tank can handle load. Just remember how long it took your old system to get all those fish.

 

[Philtron]

Andylee - The only other alternative which would probably be the easiest is to get a 20 to 30 gallon tank to put them into for a night or so... get everything moved and monitor the new setup as its running... it would be like a big water change... But im not sure, this is my first transfer into a new tank... which is why i am reading and asking questions lol... would like to try and make a nice smooth transfer

I like the black sand look, just not the black live sand by Caribsea - its more like cookies and cream... i would recommend using the natures ocean, which i might go with this time... still undecided

 

[kenconnect]

When i did my upgrade from a 57 gal rimless to a 100 gal rimless i used my old water and my old sand. I rinsed the all of the sand except for a few cup full to seed the sand and had a very lil cycle didnt lose no fish or coral with the upgrade

 

[selkoner]

I have done this over 40 times with customers tanks .... I have done 30gl to 90gl, 40gl to 120gl and so on and so on

The live rock and old water will not let the sand or new water do anything bad to the tank you can put the fish in same day and sins ur going to put back live sand it will be better ...

Also water will get cloudy only if you put back the water the wrong way ... Get a plastic plate or a lid off of a bucket and pour the water on tip of the lid ( or used a hose to pour water back its the best way ) and no cloudiness .....

Use the clear pack it form the live sand for any lil cloudiness you may get but the filter will fix the rest under a hr..... Best of luck any more tip pm me

 

[guarda]

Use new water. There's no benefit from using old water and you probably have some ammonia, phosphates, nitrates in it anyway.

 

[selkoner]

Use new water. There's no benefit from using old water and you probably have some ammonia, phosphates, nitrates in it anyway.

I would only use 10% old water with the fish in it already in the new tank ) because the fish/ coral are use yo that water ) but then top off the rest of the 90% of it with new salt water ...

 

[guarda]

I've done two 100% water changes (don't ask me how I cracked two tanks, actually cracked 3 but the last one didn't leak) and just tried to get the temp and salinity as close as possible pre-spill and all my livestock looked fine. Not even my Xenia looked any different, but that's just my experience. All the good stuff is in the rocks and sand.

 

[dacaptain78]

IME you should not see any cycle and should be able to put your fish and corals in right away. One thing I would suggest is having at least 40 gallons of freshly mixed salt water on hand ready to go. Just in case your old water gets mucked up during the transfer of the rocks and fish you will have clean water to replace it with. Again IME you will have less old water to use at the end of the transfer process than you anticipate. IDK, maybe I am just sloppy and spill a lot of water.