Moving Stuff from my old tank to my new tank

[Kaiser]

I recently picked up a nicer 30 gallon and am planning on moving my 20 gallon nano setup w/ sump/refugium into it, never done a direct tank upgrade before, what is the safest way to ensure my tank doesn't kill off all my coral and fish by re-cycling? I was thinking about throwing bioballs in my sump right now to try and colonize them, then moving them into the new tank when I moved all the fish and live rock/coral.

 

[Gweeds1980]

I recently picked up a nicer 30 gallon and am planning on moving my 20 gallon nano setup w/ sump/refugium into it, never done a direct tank upgrade before, what is the safest way to ensure my tank doesn't kill off all my coral and fish by re-cycling? I was thinking about throwing bioballs in my sump right now to try and colonize them, then moving them into the new tank when I moved all the fish and live rock/coral.

If you want to almost guarantee no cycle and you can have both tanks up and running at the same time, then half fill the new tank, get all the pumps, heaters etc going and get water right params.

During the next week, clean the sand in the old tank daily, do plenty of water changes and move the rock around, blast with a powerhead and siphon out all the gunk.

Then siphon some water from the old tank into a bucket on move day... pick out the rocks and put into the bucket, leaving all livestock in the old tank. In another bucket, put all your livestock. In another bucket, get all the sand.

Then place all the sand in the new tank, followed by rock and finally livestock. Chuck in a dose of Dr Tim's or atm colony or another live bacteria product and hey presto... job done. You may have a tiny mini cycle but chances are you'll have had any issues in old tank when you were cleaning it daily.

Whole process on a tank that size should take about an hour, with livestock being out the longest.

If you have a sump on both tanks, move all the sump equipment and media before you move the contents of the main tank. If the sump is just on the new tank and you've got new equipment, get that set up the week before the move. You can add some small rocks from the old tank immediately to help seed any new rock or media in the new sump.

 

[Hely'sreef1]

You shouldn't have too many issues as you're only increasing a small volume of water. You can just do it in one day, just keep an eye on your parameters... I'm currently upgrading my 30 gallon to 90 so am running 2 tanks while the new cycles...we are sofa less at the moment lol, luckily my family are tolerant....slightly [emoji12]

 

[Best Fish-Jake]

You really shouldn't have any issues if you get it done in 1 day.

I personally would make 15g of new water, heat it in a separate container, move all old rock into the tank and scape it, add sand (preferably you'd get new sand unless you've been good about cleaning it), add new water, Siphon 15g of old water and add to new set up, move all filter media from old tank to new tank as well as everything from the refugium, ensure temps match up, transfer fish and coral.

Side note- if you are using the old sand, remove the fish and place them into heated/ aerated containers (this will be some of the water you use in the new set up) and then use a net to scoop out all the sand . You'll want to thourougly rinse the sand with salt water before adding it to the new tank. (That can be done in a separate container or in the old tank).

 

[Kaiser]

I'm planning on moving the sump from my 20 gallon over to the 30, since my friend and I made it ourselves and it's still a good size for the 30.. I haven't exactly been the best at cleaning my sand (don't hurt me) so I already picked up some new sand and I'm going to use that.. most of my equipment on the 20 is upscaled so I was just planning on recycling it all and using it in the new tank