BTDBunch
Active Member
I understand I got extremely lucky in a terrible situation with just about everything. Fortunately I had taken time off work to take my MCAT, though unfortunately now with this and a few other emergencies, it has been pushed back.
There is not a lot of information about emergency changing tanks online, so I want to tell my story and what I've done as well as let everyone else gauge what I did wrong and right as well as their own experiences to help me through this stage and others because this happens quite a bit with such little information available online, so hopefully some people find this and will have some idea of what to do.
Background:
Hey everyone, so I've had a 15gallon acrylic nano for about 7 months. It was finally become established after endless work on balancing feeding and got my phosphates from well over .6 ppm(~200ppb phosphorus). Tank was looking great and started getting out of its ugly stage.
Day 1:
Last week Sunday at midnight the tank split in the bottom right corner out of nowhere. I acted fast with help from my fiancé. To slow the leak, threw layers of electrical tape on the split and lots of towels on the ground. After siphoning out most of the water in 5 gallon jugs started setting up an empty 20g long Aqueon that was sitting in storage. After getting the 20g water equal to the reef parameters as best I could (1.025sg, temp 77.5, pH 8.2), throw my live rock with corals into the Aqueon then worked on netting my 2 small clownfish (they are ~1.25 inches atm), equally small yellow watchman goby, fishing out all my hermits, shells, and snails, and finally, carefully removing my rock flower anemone from the bottom glass.
In the Aqueon I put a mini heater I use to heat my water change salt water and for acclimation of new corals, moved my mp10 to the very top of the water to try to oxygenate the temporary tank the best I could, and moved my crummy light over to the temp as well.
No damage to my apartment, furniture, but big hit to my mental state.
Fortunately, I was already shopping around market place for a new tank to set up and had already messaged some questions about a Red Sea 170 set up that was extremely well kept and had a lot of equipment included, and around 3 am when I finished dealing with the split tank, he was still awake and was available next day for me to pick it up though he was over 3 hours away, but the tank and equipment was all really nice and an absolute steal and since he was available next day, I saw this as an absolute win.
Day 2:
With nothing but a ghost energy drink and 2 hours of sleep I drove 3+ hours just hoping that this tank could fit in my Camry after checking in on my fish and corals, and I added some seachem prime to help with any possible spikes in my parameters and limited oxygenation.
Absolute goat hobbyist was a seachem engineer, works as a aquarium technician, and hobbyist of over +15 years helped me through the entire process, answered all my questions I've been unsure of due to the limited information, and provided some free labor of squeezing all the equipment inside my car.
For $700, I left with
- Reefer 170 tank,
- sump (16.5x16.5x14)
-Radion XR30w G4 Pro
-Bubble Magus Skimmer 3 Extreme (no silencer tho)
-Reef Mat 500
-Aquatop 200W titanium heater
-Jebao Dcw 3500 sine dc return pump
-80 pounds of sand
-50 pounds of live rock
The only unfortunate details about the day was all of the equipment was previously used in a freshwater system, so was fairly dirty because of the short notice and my rock flower anemone got shredded in my wave maker when I got home.
Days 3 & 4:
I spent these days cleaning every nook and cranny of this set up. From literally cleaning sand for +6 hours, so taking apart and deep cleaning every single part of the equipment. Since the set up was previously freshwater and because I did not want any addition harm to come to my tank, I made sure everything was "refurbished" and cleaned so it could be used long term with minimal issues.
1st: I prioritized water. Going from 15 gallons to now as much as 50 gallons, I had to buy I ton of unnecessary jugs. I tried to get premade salt water from my local fish store, but the salinity and alkalinity was 1.021sg and 5 dKH respectively, so I ended up getting additional salt as well.
2nd: I prioritized Getting the display, overflow, tubing, and sump cleaned. This allowed me to also leak test the display and sump while I also heated the water, corrected the salinity, and disperse my ceramics and sponges into the display tank to help with the bacteria. This also meant breaking down my split tank including the stand to make way for the new display.
3rd: I cleaned all other equipment and tested said equipment. I did have to go to several stores to find 500 sized roll for the reef mat.
4th: while my tank was running by itself I started to curate a aqua scape. The live rock he provided had only 1 main salvageable piece bc the rest was either broken coral shaped rock or were giant slabs that would cover my entire tank. I did end up dropping about $240 on some $6 rock st my lfs, along with a lot of putty and super glue since I really didn't have the luxury of waiting for a rock kit or for them to restock. I did sooo much research on aqua scaping and spent hours upon hours trying to maximize it in surface area and aesthetics. I recommend buying those $100 rock kits and also having a cardboard cut out of the tank dimensions. I did the cardboard but I did unfortunately forget about the overflow...
5th: I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned sand. Thought it was some high quality sand. He had this bucket sitting right outside his door. It was filled with dead bugs, some random trash, a couple of matches, dead corals, frag plugs, and lots and lots of shells. I recommend a 3 container system with 2 different strainers.
one container for current sand, one for washing sand, and one for "clean" sand.
My method was scooping 2-3 cups of sand at a time in the shower (again I live in an apartment) into a strainer that is the same size as the container area, filling said container with water with the shower raining into the bucket while you hand sift the sand and every 10-15 seconds dumping out the top layer of water from the sand to remove the light/less dense contaminates while also picking out the large contaminates, such as plugs and shells. After a few rounds of this sifting small granule sand fell through the strainer and the rest got thrown into the "clean container". You repeat this till you complete the 1st round of the sand cleaning. I also recommend doing some rounds of hand sifting and draining for the sand filling the bucket.
Round 2 starts with cleaning out the previous dirty sand container as it will now be the clean sand container. I did 3 or so rounds of this which I think is recommended as I was still pulling out crap after the 3rd round though just a little. Finally, I filled the clean container with water and seachem prime and stirred up the sand in layers, I then used my scooping strainer to throw up the sand into the air several time to get as much of the water out as possible and but it into its final container.
6th: I did not have access to any turbostart, but I did have seed. I began by emptying out the display tank into my many of jugs. Then I added my aquascape, and then sand. I used one of the jugs to acclimate the temp tank to my display and since it was already heated it went really well. And then re added the water back to the display and sump. I followed the directly and added seed to my reefer.
I continued to add seachem prime to my temporary tank everyday and I believe this helped my situation a lot.
Everyday, I checked the temp, salanity, pH of my display, sump, and temporary tank and marked the water levels with expo marker.
Day 5:
I added the live rock with my corals connected to the display tank at points where they would not move without being glued. I then removed almost all the water from the temporary tank into order to grab my fish and shrimp.
Day 6/7:
I removed the corals from the live rock and added them to my current rock then placed the live rock into the sump.
I also organized my sump and cabinet including the wiring.
I was able to set up my radion and mp10 to Mobius and my reef mat to reef beat.
Specs:
Display 34.1 gallon
Sump: 13.4 gallon
RODI Reservoir: 5gallon
RETURN: ~600 gph
Wave maker: 500-900 gph Lagoon
Lights: AB+ 12:00-2000
Temp 88.3
Salanity 1.024-1.026
Equipment
Reefer G1 170
MP10 QD
Radion XR30w G4 Pro
Bubble Magus Skimmer 3 Extreme
Reef Mat 500
Tunze osmolator 3 nano
Aquatop 200W titanium heater
Jebao Dcw 3500 sine dc return pump
Vca flex random flow return nossel
Fish
2 snowflake clownfish
1 yellow watchmen goby
Clean Up Crew
8 dwarf blue leg hermit
6 astrea snails
2 red banded trochus snails
4 nassarius snails (2 small 2 large)
1 tuxedo urchin
1 blood red cleaner shrimp
+ Corals and 2 anemone (bta and rock flower)
Parameters: tested everyday
Salinity 1.025 - 1.026
Temp 77.8-78.5
pH 8-8.1
Phosphates .25 now .2
Nitrates 3.0 now 9.0
Calcium 420-450 ppm
Magnesium 1300-1380 ppm
TLDR:
Tank split over night and upgraded from 15g to a 47.5 total volume in under a week. Please wash used equipment out thoroughly and ask them details such as last used, for what, any issues, vids of it working recently, and any missing equipment/parts. I had only one of my rock flower anemones die due to it wondering after being taken off broken tank floor and getting shredded by wave maker which also had the wet side break after dropping it. I got lucky with my time availablity but also had little to no information to go off.
I now have involuntarily upgraded my reef tank to a much easier and less swing happy tank I will be monitoring my parameters and everything else like a hawk for the next month then start increasing my bioload of fish and corals. Only my red goniopora seems to be unhappy with the move.
I dropped $750 on this set up + $250 of rock + $100 for missing parts from fish tanks direct + $250 on miscellaneous supplies + $200 on fish medications + $200 for mcat rescheduling = ~$1750 for everything + my sanity for a beautiful new reef aquarium. I am super excited to have all this extra room. I want to add a cpr AquaFuge 2 to my sump in a month or 2 when my bioload is increased because it will not only allow for chaeto, copepods, and nutrient control, but also add another 2.5 gallons to my tank and barely fit inside the cabinet.
Recommendations:
1. Please have a place to house all of your fish, corals, live rock, etc for up to a week temporarily. This could be a unoccupied tank or even just a trash can that is used for larger water changes or as a salt water reservoir for larger tanks.
2. Have the following available: turbostart, seachem prime, ammonia alert badges (I just bought them), an air pump with sponge filters on stand by, standby by heater, and optionally stress guard.
3. After doing obsurd amount of water tests recently, unless you have the auto testers, I highly recommend the Hanna salinity/temp tester and the Hanna pH pen (also a new purchase). I also recommend the Hanna phosphorus tester which converts to phosphates in ppb by value * 3.066 / 1000 = phosphates ppm
4. New tanks do not need a protein skimmer. They will just blow white bubbles of nothing everywhere.
5. Temporary tanks do not need to be fancy, as long as you have moving surface water for oxygenation and a way to monitor temperature it will work in a pinch.
6. I also recommend everyone pick up a hygger mini pump on Amazon only $12 and helps me mix my salt water, remove water from container on the ground, and helps me refill my rodi reservoir jug.
7. Seachem prime adding to temporary tanks seems to help the fish with nutrient build up.
Thank you for reading. I'll try to answer questions and take advice and criticism openly!
As of 4/23/25 this tank is now running on day 5 so still a long way to go before it's established.
There is not a lot of information about emergency changing tanks online, so I want to tell my story and what I've done as well as let everyone else gauge what I did wrong and right as well as their own experiences to help me through this stage and others because this happens quite a bit with such little information available online, so hopefully some people find this and will have some idea of what to do.
Background:
Hey everyone, so I've had a 15gallon acrylic nano for about 7 months. It was finally become established after endless work on balancing feeding and got my phosphates from well over .6 ppm(~200ppb phosphorus). Tank was looking great and started getting out of its ugly stage.
Day 1:
Last week Sunday at midnight the tank split in the bottom right corner out of nowhere. I acted fast with help from my fiancé. To slow the leak, threw layers of electrical tape on the split and lots of towels on the ground. After siphoning out most of the water in 5 gallon jugs started setting up an empty 20g long Aqueon that was sitting in storage. After getting the 20g water equal to the reef parameters as best I could (1.025sg, temp 77.5, pH 8.2), throw my live rock with corals into the Aqueon then worked on netting my 2 small clownfish (they are ~1.25 inches atm), equally small yellow watchman goby, fishing out all my hermits, shells, and snails, and finally, carefully removing my rock flower anemone from the bottom glass.
In the Aqueon I put a mini heater I use to heat my water change salt water and for acclimation of new corals, moved my mp10 to the very top of the water to try to oxygenate the temporary tank the best I could, and moved my crummy light over to the temp as well.
No damage to my apartment, furniture, but big hit to my mental state.
Fortunately, I was already shopping around market place for a new tank to set up and had already messaged some questions about a Red Sea 170 set up that was extremely well kept and had a lot of equipment included, and around 3 am when I finished dealing with the split tank, he was still awake and was available next day for me to pick it up though he was over 3 hours away, but the tank and equipment was all really nice and an absolute steal and since he was available next day, I saw this as an absolute win.
Day 2:
With nothing but a ghost energy drink and 2 hours of sleep I drove 3+ hours just hoping that this tank could fit in my Camry after checking in on my fish and corals, and I added some seachem prime to help with any possible spikes in my parameters and limited oxygenation.
Absolute goat hobbyist was a seachem engineer, works as a aquarium technician, and hobbyist of over +15 years helped me through the entire process, answered all my questions I've been unsure of due to the limited information, and provided some free labor of squeezing all the equipment inside my car.
For $700, I left with
- Reefer 170 tank,
- sump (16.5x16.5x14)
-Radion XR30w G4 Pro
-Bubble Magus Skimmer 3 Extreme (no silencer tho)
-Reef Mat 500
-Aquatop 200W titanium heater
-Jebao Dcw 3500 sine dc return pump
-80 pounds of sand
-50 pounds of live rock
The only unfortunate details about the day was all of the equipment was previously used in a freshwater system, so was fairly dirty because of the short notice and my rock flower anemone got shredded in my wave maker when I got home.
Days 3 & 4:
I spent these days cleaning every nook and cranny of this set up. From literally cleaning sand for +6 hours, so taking apart and deep cleaning every single part of the equipment. Since the set up was previously freshwater and because I did not want any addition harm to come to my tank, I made sure everything was "refurbished" and cleaned so it could be used long term with minimal issues.
1st: I prioritized water. Going from 15 gallons to now as much as 50 gallons, I had to buy I ton of unnecessary jugs. I tried to get premade salt water from my local fish store, but the salinity and alkalinity was 1.021sg and 5 dKH respectively, so I ended up getting additional salt as well.
2nd: I prioritized Getting the display, overflow, tubing, and sump cleaned. This allowed me to also leak test the display and sump while I also heated the water, corrected the salinity, and disperse my ceramics and sponges into the display tank to help with the bacteria. This also meant breaking down my split tank including the stand to make way for the new display.
3rd: I cleaned all other equipment and tested said equipment. I did have to go to several stores to find 500 sized roll for the reef mat.
4th: while my tank was running by itself I started to curate a aqua scape. The live rock he provided had only 1 main salvageable piece bc the rest was either broken coral shaped rock or were giant slabs that would cover my entire tank. I did end up dropping about $240 on some $6 rock st my lfs, along with a lot of putty and super glue since I really didn't have the luxury of waiting for a rock kit or for them to restock. I did sooo much research on aqua scaping and spent hours upon hours trying to maximize it in surface area and aesthetics. I recommend buying those $100 rock kits and also having a cardboard cut out of the tank dimensions. I did the cardboard but I did unfortunately forget about the overflow...
5th: I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned sand. Thought it was some high quality sand. He had this bucket sitting right outside his door. It was filled with dead bugs, some random trash, a couple of matches, dead corals, frag plugs, and lots and lots of shells. I recommend a 3 container system with 2 different strainers.
one container for current sand, one for washing sand, and one for "clean" sand.
My method was scooping 2-3 cups of sand at a time in the shower (again I live in an apartment) into a strainer that is the same size as the container area, filling said container with water with the shower raining into the bucket while you hand sift the sand and every 10-15 seconds dumping out the top layer of water from the sand to remove the light/less dense contaminates while also picking out the large contaminates, such as plugs and shells. After a few rounds of this sifting small granule sand fell through the strainer and the rest got thrown into the "clean container". You repeat this till you complete the 1st round of the sand cleaning. I also recommend doing some rounds of hand sifting and draining for the sand filling the bucket.
Round 2 starts with cleaning out the previous dirty sand container as it will now be the clean sand container. I did 3 or so rounds of this which I think is recommended as I was still pulling out crap after the 3rd round though just a little. Finally, I filled the clean container with water and seachem prime and stirred up the sand in layers, I then used my scooping strainer to throw up the sand into the air several time to get as much of the water out as possible and but it into its final container.
6th: I did not have access to any turbostart, but I did have seed. I began by emptying out the display tank into my many of jugs. Then I added my aquascape, and then sand. I used one of the jugs to acclimate the temp tank to my display and since it was already heated it went really well. And then re added the water back to the display and sump. I followed the directly and added seed to my reefer.
I continued to add seachem prime to my temporary tank everyday and I believe this helped my situation a lot.
Everyday, I checked the temp, salanity, pH of my display, sump, and temporary tank and marked the water levels with expo marker.
Day 5:
I added the live rock with my corals connected to the display tank at points where they would not move without being glued. I then removed almost all the water from the temporary tank into order to grab my fish and shrimp.
Day 6/7:
I removed the corals from the live rock and added them to my current rock then placed the live rock into the sump.
I also organized my sump and cabinet including the wiring.
I was able to set up my radion and mp10 to Mobius and my reef mat to reef beat.
Specs:
Display 34.1 gallon
Sump: 13.4 gallon
RODI Reservoir: 5gallon
RETURN: ~600 gph
Wave maker: 500-900 gph Lagoon
Lights: AB+ 12:00-2000
Temp 88.3
Salanity 1.024-1.026
Equipment
Reefer G1 170
MP10 QD
Radion XR30w G4 Pro
Bubble Magus Skimmer 3 Extreme
Reef Mat 500
Tunze osmolator 3 nano
Aquatop 200W titanium heater
Jebao Dcw 3500 sine dc return pump
Vca flex random flow return nossel
Fish
2 snowflake clownfish
1 yellow watchmen goby
Clean Up Crew
8 dwarf blue leg hermit
6 astrea snails
2 red banded trochus snails
4 nassarius snails (2 small 2 large)
1 tuxedo urchin
1 blood red cleaner shrimp
+ Corals and 2 anemone (bta and rock flower)
Parameters: tested everyday
Salinity 1.025 - 1.026
Temp 77.8-78.5
pH 8-8.1
Phosphates .25 now .2
Nitrates 3.0 now 9.0
Calcium 420-450 ppm
Magnesium 1300-1380 ppm
TLDR:
Tank split over night and upgraded from 15g to a 47.5 total volume in under a week. Please wash used equipment out thoroughly and ask them details such as last used, for what, any issues, vids of it working recently, and any missing equipment/parts. I had only one of my rock flower anemones die due to it wondering after being taken off broken tank floor and getting shredded by wave maker which also had the wet side break after dropping it. I got lucky with my time availablity but also had little to no information to go off.
I now have involuntarily upgraded my reef tank to a much easier and less swing happy tank I will be monitoring my parameters and everything else like a hawk for the next month then start increasing my bioload of fish and corals. Only my red goniopora seems to be unhappy with the move.
I dropped $750 on this set up + $250 of rock + $100 for missing parts from fish tanks direct + $250 on miscellaneous supplies + $200 on fish medications + $200 for mcat rescheduling = ~$1750 for everything + my sanity for a beautiful new reef aquarium. I am super excited to have all this extra room. I want to add a cpr AquaFuge 2 to my sump in a month or 2 when my bioload is increased because it will not only allow for chaeto, copepods, and nutrient control, but also add another 2.5 gallons to my tank and barely fit inside the cabinet.
Recommendations:
1. Please have a place to house all of your fish, corals, live rock, etc for up to a week temporarily. This could be a unoccupied tank or even just a trash can that is used for larger water changes or as a salt water reservoir for larger tanks.
2. Have the following available: turbostart, seachem prime, ammonia alert badges (I just bought them), an air pump with sponge filters on stand by, standby by heater, and optionally stress guard.
3. After doing obsurd amount of water tests recently, unless you have the auto testers, I highly recommend the Hanna salinity/temp tester and the Hanna pH pen (also a new purchase). I also recommend the Hanna phosphorus tester which converts to phosphates in ppb by value * 3.066 / 1000 = phosphates ppm
4. New tanks do not need a protein skimmer. They will just blow white bubbles of nothing everywhere.
5. Temporary tanks do not need to be fancy, as long as you have moving surface water for oxygenation and a way to monitor temperature it will work in a pinch.
6. I also recommend everyone pick up a hygger mini pump on Amazon only $12 and helps me mix my salt water, remove water from container on the ground, and helps me refill my rodi reservoir jug.
7. Seachem prime adding to temporary tanks seems to help the fish with nutrient build up.
Thank you for reading. I'll try to answer questions and take advice and criticism openly!
As of 4/23/25 this tank is now running on day 5 so still a long way to go before it's established.
