Tank Change - Need advice

[Salty Dog]

Ok....

I currently have a 55 gallon community tank that has been established for about six years. It has about 1-2" of substrate on the bottom, a few anenomes, a feather-duster, some coral frags, about 3 green chromis, a clownfish, a yellow-tailed damsel, a few gobies, two peppermint shrimp, and some coral frags - plus the usual cleaning crew of snails, emerald crabs, and blue legged hermit crabs.

Within a couple of weeks, I'll be moving everything in that tank to my new 90 gallon (thanks to Mike Mota). The new tank will be in the same location as the old one.

Clearly this will be a long day, but I wanted to get some tips and tricks for making it as smooth as possible.

My basic plan is to relocate everything to a large tub, put some powerheads and heaters in there, and physically move the tanks around. Then maybe repopulate the next morning.

My biggest concern is the substrate. I'll obviously need to add additional substrate, since I'm not only going to have a bigger tank, but I have to put some in the sump as well.

I'm concerned that if I move the existing substrate to the new tank, some things might be "unleashed" affecting the water chemistry. Any ideas on this, or how to prevent it?

Also, I'm going to be diluting the water quite a bit. There is about 60 lbs of live rock in the existing tank, so I estimate that there's actually only about 30 gallons of real water there. 90-55=35+20 (sump) = 55 gallons of "new" water. Anyone think there will be a problem there if I use RODI water salted to the same SG?

All comments and questions are welcomed - I want to do this right, with minimum impact on my community.

Thanks,
Eric

 

[johnchapple714]

I had to change my tank overnight due to a break a few months ago. I used my existing water, live rock and sand plus new RO/DI water that had to be mixed with salt on the spot. I had my fish, corals and clean-up crew in unheated buckets while the salt mixed in the new tank. Within a few hours I had to get the fish into the new tank due to the bucket water cooling rapidly (i didnt have any extra heaters at the time). Everything survived and is still living happily. Obviously this is not the recomended method but to answer your question the new ro/di water plus the existing water should be fine. I have also found that bio-spira will help cylce a tank very quickly.

 

[Chris L]

i would use new sand. better safe then sorry.once the new sand is in try to use as much original water as possible.

 

[SaltCreep]

I think the key to doing this kind of thing is having MANY MANY buckets and styro's.

Here's what I did when i moved and upgraded from 55 to 75:



Buy new sand or crushed coral and rinse it out in advance.

Then let it soak for a few days in old tank water from a waterchange.

Use as much of your old substrate as you can rinse out with old tank water.




Siphon off clean tank water to hold fish and corals into buckets BEFORE you stir things up.


Put fish and coral buckets aside in an out of the way place so you can move tanks and filters without knocking them over.


Make new tank water the same temp as the water the fish are sitting in.


HAVE A MOP.

 

[Salty Dog]

bump