Any tips on started a second/splitting a first tank up?

[Sharkattackmack]

After getting a little excited on boxing day shopping, I'm starting to think I might upgrade from our 16 gal biocube to a fluval m60 (24gal). There's a good deal on marketplace for one and I'm fed up with being capped for space with the AIO system on the cube.

Would it be easier to just buy new rock and cycle the tank? Obviously it would be easier so we could re aquascape but we wanted to consider using our live rock. How long will the bacteria in our rocks stay alive our of water? If we bought a small 5-10gal qt/frag tank to transfer our corals to then did a quick switch over with our rocks would we lose the bacteria?

Any tips or other ideas would be awesome. Thanks!!

 

[Idoc]

As long a the rocks remain wet and submerged in saltwater, the bacteria will remain in the rocks.

If you have the rocks out of the water for a little while while rescaping, etc... you should be fine. You might have a little die off od bacteria and other life on the rocks which could lead to a mini cycle. Just test your water and watch it closely.

 

[NYCMAN]

I just rebuilt my 200. I had softies that took over. Polyps, Xenia, GSP. I have MH/T5, calc reactor, the whole right way to do hobby so want to go pure SPS. I set up an 85 gallon kiddie pool with heaters and kessil over it. Took everything out of tank, and chopped off all softies, throwing away rock and coral that was too infested, not recoverable. All else went into kiddie pool along with 100 lbs of new live rock purchased from LFS (fully cycled). I then completely emptied tank and cleaned it out entirely down to glass. Sump, ATS, and fuge left alone. Then added new reef sand, and refilled tank with premade 35PPM saltwater. Probably reused 75% or more of existing live rock. That which was nice but had no function in new reefscape I placed in fuge. Let her rip over night with return pump back on, with skimmer sump and fuge back in action. Then next day, added all the rock and coral from kiddie pool, or at least most of it, recreating frags and new sculptures. Total time, about 30 hours soup to nuts. Now a week later starting to see slight signs of new tank syndrome (like diatoms on glass). Will be interesting to see how next 6 months go, in terms of having typical new tank syndrome issues like cyano. My tank previously, after a typical rough first 6 to 9 months was completely stable and fine, growing SPS like crazy.