Switching out Live Rock

[BlueWorldJeff]

I sold my live rock to someone who is starting up a Red Sea Reef tank and has cycled the tank for 5 weeks with different live rock.

My live rock has been in my tank for 3 years and is formed into pillars with epoxy.

He wants to remove some live rock from his tank and add the pillars. The pillars have some encrusted corals on them and he wants to add coral and fish from my tank as well (I am shutting my tank down)

Will removing his LR and adding this LR pillar cause a cycle in the tank?

Should he add the LR Pillar with some water from my tank, then wait until ammonia and nitrite 0 to add more fish/coral?

When I moved to my new house 3 years ago, I brought the LR pillars with me and was able to get new water/sand cycled and add the rock. But I added the fish a little later. The coral that was on the rock did not die and I dont think a cycle occured, but I have a 180gallon, His is smaller, like 90

 

[EmdeReef]

There will only be a cycle if there was dieoff during the exchange, i.e. if the live rock was left out of water for too long. To be completely safe I would boost the tank with some bacteria.

 

[BlueWorldJeff]

There will only be a cycle if there was dieoff during the exchange, i.e. if the live rock was left out of water for too long. To be completely safe I would boost the tank with some bacteria.

We plan on shipping in the source tank water.

 

[brandon429]

we can make that happen without a cycle, here's a bunch of work. on page one is me draining my 13 yr nano reef, full of coral, for half an hour in the cold winter air.

next day/skip cycle all open. You are about to be much nicer to that pillar rock than I was to my super old pico / skip cycle biology.

the strangest thing about skip cycle biology is that how you clean those rocks coming from your tank, before you move to his, is what determines if he recycles or not.

It works like this: all recycles of live rock being relocated are caused by upwelled detritus/waste if any inside the pores. If there is no detritus, then you can move it (or leave it in the air half an hour apparently) without issue. If there is pent up detritus, it gets upwelled/exposed and when he sets it into a new tank all that rot is coming off and making spikes that overwhelm bac, its not that bac died during the xfer.

so if you transfer clean rocks, you can do 23 pages of skip cycle work and never have a single cycle. If you would document this neat exchange, him too with pics after setup, we want to use it in that work thread for others to copy the moves later on.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445