Moving between tanks - advise needed

[nezquick]

Hi,

happy new year first and foremost.

im picking up a new tank this week - same volume just a newer model.

I have a bit of a issue - can I just move everything over including the old water without issue? Or will the new tank need to cycle again? I was tempted to change the display rock but understand that a lot of the bacteria lives within the rock so maybe this bit isn’t necessarily a good idea?

old tank had a external filter new tank has a sump but I have used ceramic filter bags etc so can easily transfer to the new sump. I can easily cut the filter sponges into the correct shape for the new sump too

I’m just a bit worried about potentially crashing the tank and wiping out the coral and livestock so after some advice and any experiences people have had.


Thanks!

 

[brandon429]

it takes specific steps to be safe, here's fifty pages of perfect transfer jobs:

 

[nezquick]

it takes specific steps to be safe, here's fifty pages of perfect transfer jobs:

Thanks! I can’t see a link

 

[brandon429]

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[nezquick]

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

I’ll start reading. Thanks for a quick reply and link!

 

[brandon429]

that's our reference, but we can customize your tank transfer here live time to avoid you reading for eight hours

this is the condensed summary, post here when you begin the actual job after some study along with this micro summary and you will be set:

-no bottle bac is used

-your sand is rinsed in tap water for hours, hours in tap water until clear then final rinse in saltwater to prepare it for use in the new tank. this applies to old sand, or new sand you buy, without exception, though this feels like we're harming things/we are not. all fifty pages are a sand rinse example in tap, it's ironically the best way and the only way logged for pages with no cycles

-you may use some or all of your old water, doesn't matter.

-keep fish covered while holding in totes for the transport, they will jump out

-apply rasping as mentioned on page one to your rocks so that you move over rocks with no algae, if applicable.


the proper sand rinse is the single most important part of the entire process, above all, it's how we got all those results and happy aquarists.

 

[brandon429]

The only params we match between new and old tank are temp and salinity, not the others. We don't test for ammonia, it causes people to veer off the charted course and add all kinds of reactive dosers such as Prime; we don't want that added we want a clean water transfer

All fifty pages are skip cycle moves with no ammonia testing or bottle bac used

 

[nezquick]

To be fair I think the sand could do with a bloody good rinse!

 

[brandon429]

I lose 98% of readers at that part for sure


Goes against core reefing paradigms we all learned

It's so ironic that treating sand that mean as we do actually provides the entire skip cycle process.

Hidden reasons why:

We rinse old sand before transfer for obvious reasons, you can see its full of waste and the new tank doesn't benefit from you trading over the waste component, it is benefited by you transferring over zero waste attached to rock or sand, the rocks and animals and corals, the water, then it will skip cycle

Not even a seeding single handful of sand is moved over; no unrinsed sand is moved.

We rinse new sand for opposite reasons: harmless silt clouding isn't waste its just ugly chalk dust people choose to keep because groupthink has them believing sandbed bacteria aren't expendable. They are, always, in all display reef tanks.

We rinse new sand because the marker for a guaranteed skip cycle is perfectly clear water in the new tank; if something actually went wrong with the bacteria attached to rock the new system will go cloudy and that gives us time to react with a water change to guide it

If we, by habit of non rinse, create a guaranteed initial 3 day cloud in the new tank among animals (harmless silt but still very ugly and opaque we can see) we lose that ability to visually verify the transfer went safely.

Perfectly rinsed transfer tanks simply do not cloud whatsoever we show

It is worth the effort to prepare sand this way.

So glad you'd consider our method please take incremental pics of steps so we can add you to the mix

 

[ckuhny3]

that's our reference, but we can customize your tank transfer here live time to avoid you reading for eight hours

this is the condensed summary, post here when you begin the actual job after some study along with this micro summary and you will be set:

-no bottle bac is used

-your sand is rinsed in tap water for hours, hours in tap water until clear then final rinse in saltwater to prepare it for use in the new tank. this applies to old sand, or new sand you buy, without exception, though this feels like we're harming things/we are not. all fifty pages are a sand rinse example in tap, it's ironically the best way and the only way logged for pages with no cycles

-you may use some or all of your old water, doesn't matter.

-keep fish covered while holding in totes for the transport, they will jump out

-apply rasping as mentioned on page one to your rocks so that you move over rocks with no algae, if applicable.


the proper sand rinse is the single most important part of the entire process, above all, it's how we got all those results and happy aquarists.

Following along for when I get my 120 next week! When you say apply rasping to the existing rock what does that mean? What if I have coral growing on the rock?

 

[brandon429]

rasping is the opposite of using a brush to brush off algae. that smashes it, removes a little bit, and grinds pieces into the rock structure.

a metal rasp is what a dentist uses to force plaque off your teeth, not a brush.

a sharp steak knife tip is a fine rasp; use it to dig into small crevices and forcefully dislodge all algae. this is done with the rock setting on the counter, in the air, and you can simply work around corals glued to the rock. all corals can likely go an hour outside water; if you're concerned, dribble saltwater across them as you work outside the tank.

rinse off the rasped sections in saltwater to rinse away the algae off the rock you dislodged, now the rock is clean. if it was only a minor algae spot, move forward but if it was a deep/large spot, put peroxide on the cleaned spot you just rasped: this helps to melt those anchoring/holdfast cells in the algae that allow it to keep popping up.

the tank transfer disassembly step is the only practical time the rocks will be out of the water, and you get to be the grazer you always wanted to work correctly

 

[ckuhny3]

Sounds good ! I’ll be getting my new tank next week and will be getting the supplies needed to pre make all the water in bins and get a few 10 gallon tanks/heaters/sponge filters for the fish. I want everything to be prepped and ready for the big upgrade day . Should I plan it to all be done in one day? Can I pre rinse the new sand ahead of time and have it sitting in 5gallon bucket dry after rinsing?

 

[brandon429]

excellent preps, for sure that works. I just moved cities 6 hours apart with my super old pico reef vase/17 years old.

it's had several rip cleans/rip cleans are a trick to aging tanks without losing them vs the old hands off forever way, so the rip clean I prepared was no harsh treatment for the vase it was used to being parted out and worked on.

my vase was in need of a rip clean anyway due to algae/cyano buildup from last year's heavy feedings I did.

*I bought a small 5 pound bag of caribsea ocean direct sand from petsmart back in october '22

I did the rinse rules on it; verified in a clean glass it was totally cloudless. I set that lump of wet rinsed sand in a kid's play bucket and just set it in my closet for two months, moved over here in December and tossed my old sand. it was stored open-topped to evaporate; if capped off wet you know it would smell mildew after two mos/keep it open topped during storage.

I used peroxide + razor blade to completely scrape out my vase at my apartment before I moved after it was all taken apart, and all corals and live rock was set into a styrofoam container with water, a bubbler, and my heater and that was my transport vessel to the new home 6 hours away. it ran on a common power inverter plugged into cigarette lighter in car

then at new home I took the dry/2 month old prepped sand, put into my vase, filled with clean water matching temp and salinity, set in rocks and corals, and it perfectly skip cycled 6 hours away.

not every tank in that example thread is a tank transfer, some are just rip cleans to beat algae or cyano or dinos.

but the steps are the exact same for every single entrant, a tank transfer just lands inside new glass and in my case it lands inside a new city too. in years prior I'd just rip clean the dirty/aging pico vase on the verge of old tank syndrome crash, and it was instantly fixed to run another year or two.

rip cleans are the cure to old tank syndrome, they absolutely impart unlimited biological lifespan to any reef tank.

super pro reefers might get just as old without any rip cleans, more power to them.

rip cleans always work for the masses, though. I've never been able to build a no-lifespan pico reef without rip clean intervention, longest I got pure hands off was about 3 years when my first one crashed.


I didn't mind cheating in this way thereafter, to get the oldest pico reef on the planet

 

[brandon429]

tank transfers are also a great time to revisit having a sandbed altogether. the only reason it takes fifty pages of work to not kill people's reefs is because sandbeds present in such varying ways across tanks.

it is ok to simply leave out the sandbed in any transferring reef when moving over it's live rock, instantly. sandbeds and their bacteria are instantly expendable in any reef tank if we do the transfer correctly and not cause a bunch of clouding when fish are in the old system being taken down.

if we all just had bare bottom live rock systems to move/you just move them, no fanfare needed no mass rinsing needed no tap water needed. sandbeds in a large tank are a royal headache in my opinion. however my 7" deep sandbed in a pico vase is no trouble whatsoever due to total accessibility.


**don't forget to reduce light levels in the new reef, and ramp up just like its a new lighting system over a few days. this prevents all coral bleaching from stresses that we have been able to log above. don't set up a rip clean new tank on the same lighting power and duration that the pre-rip cleaned tank ran, re ramp it all just like a set of brand new lights.