Cycling old tank

[Alexander Lucas]

Hello I have a reefer 525xl that is established, I am thinking of starting it completely over using some of the rock I have but mostly new rock and sand, my question is can I just disconnect my DT from my sump drain all the water out put in the sand and rock and then cycle that tank separately from the sump? The reason I say this is I have chaeto and lots if pods in the sump so I'm wondering if I can just throw a small pump in the sump and plumb it into itself to keep water flowing and everything alive in there while i cycle the display tank? Hope that made sense

 

[User]

That’ll work perfectly fine. It’s how I cycled my 180 while keeping my sump offline so I didn’t have to do a massive nitrate reduction water change. 165 gallons vs 320 if sump was still attached. I just recirculated water already in sump with a 400 gph pump like you propose, and it went great [emoji106]

Post 167 in this thread-

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/neil’s-in-wall-180-with-basement-fishroom.390436/

 

[Alexander Lucas]

That’ll work perfectly fine. It’s how I cycled my 180 while keeping my sump offline so I didn’t have to do a massive nitrate reduction water change. 165 gallons vs 320 if sump was still attached. I just recirculated water already in sump with a 400 gph pump like you propose, and it went great [emoji106]

Post 167 in this thread-

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/neil’s-in-wall-180-with-basement-fishroom.390436/

How long did you wait to connect the whole system back together again I'm worried about tieing them together to early and possibly killing the copepods, and also dod you just ghost feed the sump every couple days?

 

[User]

Well, there was nothing in the sump except water. It’s a new system, so nothing to feed.

I waited until my cycle was definitely done, and I had a few sprinklings of diatoms in the DT. Then 165 gallon water change, refill DT with NSW then brought the sump back online