Hi,
Im almost done with building my second reef tank for lps corals and some other low/medium light/flow corals as wel as some chill fish including my mandarin that's living a lonely live for almost a year in a q-tank (lots of pods in there though).
Im gonna connect the tank to the sump of my main tank which is running a little over 2 years.
This will save a lot of equipement and water chemistry maintenance and the bigger body of water will be more stable.
The 20 kg of rock I'm gonna use for the new tank is mined rock from a place where used to be a sea so fairly clean but dead.
Im cleaning it now in a tub.
Im going to add a 2/2,5 inch sandbed as well with mainly dead sand and a top layer of live sand.
The main tank is 300 liter display and has about 20kg of rock without sand.
The new tank is 200 liter and will have 20 kg of rock and 25kg sand.
The main tank has a 50 liter sump for the equipment and a second sump plumed to the main sump is a 70 liter refugium with cheato.
The plan is to let the outflow of the second tank flow into the fuge and to put the returnpump to the second tank in the returnpump chamber of the main sump.
The main tank drains in the main sump and so the water of the two tanks will mix.
Now for my issue..
It seems to me that just adding the new tank to the main system will be quite a destabilizeing event as it has more surface area as the main tank and it is all dead.
The main tank has a fair amount of sps and fish so I'm afraid this could lead to mortalitys.
What would be the best way to do this?
I was thinking to dry scape the tank and fill it with dead sand and let it cook for 6/weeks with some bacteria addatives just as a normal cycle and keep it isolated from the main system.
After that I would add the live sand, conect it to the main system and let the returnpump run just for some minutes a day or so to slowly let the systems merge.
And than increase the on time slowly over the course of a month or more?
This would hopefully prevent shocking the main tank and getting all cinds of algae or worse in the new tank from the nutrients of the main tank.
What do you guys and girls think?
Im almost done with building my second reef tank for lps corals and some other low/medium light/flow corals as wel as some chill fish including my mandarin that's living a lonely live for almost a year in a q-tank (lots of pods in there though).
Im gonna connect the tank to the sump of my main tank which is running a little over 2 years.
This will save a lot of equipement and water chemistry maintenance and the bigger body of water will be more stable.
The 20 kg of rock I'm gonna use for the new tank is mined rock from a place where used to be a sea so fairly clean but dead.
Im cleaning it now in a tub.
Im going to add a 2/2,5 inch sandbed as well with mainly dead sand and a top layer of live sand.
The main tank is 300 liter display and has about 20kg of rock without sand.
The new tank is 200 liter and will have 20 kg of rock and 25kg sand.
The main tank has a 50 liter sump for the equipment and a second sump plumed to the main sump is a 70 liter refugium with cheato.
The plan is to let the outflow of the second tank flow into the fuge and to put the returnpump to the second tank in the returnpump chamber of the main sump.
The main tank drains in the main sump and so the water of the two tanks will mix.
Now for my issue..
It seems to me that just adding the new tank to the main system will be quite a destabilizeing event as it has more surface area as the main tank and it is all dead.
The main tank has a fair amount of sps and fish so I'm afraid this could lead to mortalitys.
What would be the best way to do this?
I was thinking to dry scape the tank and fill it with dead sand and let it cook for 6/weeks with some bacteria addatives just as a normal cycle and keep it isolated from the main system.
After that I would add the live sand, conect it to the main system and let the returnpump run just for some minutes a day or so to slowly let the systems merge.
And than increase the on time slowly over the course of a month or more?
This would hopefully prevent shocking the main tank and getting all cinds of algae or worse in the new tank from the nutrients of the main tank.
What do you guys and girls think?
.
