Tank upgrade trying to leave behind hydroids and worms

AmandaMarie1116

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So I’m going from a 30 gal to a 55 gal reef tank and current problems in my 29 gal tank is that I have spaghetti worms and hydroids. I don’t want either in my new tank so my idea is to not use my previous substrate (elimination of some of the worms) and using new sand. I know with that my beneficial bacteria will be gone and by dipping my rocks with the hydroids on them will ruin the bacteria on those. So my question is…. If I use a 3rd tank (that I will be transferring the fish into in the mean time so I can swap tanks) should I put my new sand in there and some of my old tanks water filtered so no hydroids come with. Is a good idea to run the tank for a few weeks so the sand can get the beneficial bacteria needed as if it’s a new tank before adding my corals in? I don’t want anything to do but I feel like a nut juggling all fish tanks right now..
Rereading this it sounds very confusing but hopefully it can be understood lol.
Open to any ideas or possible solutions!! PLEASE and THANK YOU!
 

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal

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What kind of hydroids? If they are the colonial ones, you'll have to manually remove them (best way is to chip off the part of the rock they're on). The other types of hydroids I've encountered seem to only last a short while.
Do you have spaghetti worms (these build tubes made of sand) or hair worms (no tubes, lots of tentacles)? Honestly, you're probably not going to be able to avoid getting them in your new tank... They are good clean up crew, so I like them myself :)
 

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal

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Also, your tank water will have minimal beneficial bacteria (bb), so while using it isn't necessarily a bad idea, it won't really help your cycle.
If you're worried about your rocks not having enough bb in the new tank, you can always add some filter sponges or something like Matrix to your current system for a while before the move, and use that material as your biological filter in the new tank
 
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AmandaMarie1116

AmandaMarie1116

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What kind of hydroids? If they are the colonial ones, you'll have to manually remove them (best way is to chip off the part of the rock they're on). The other types of hydroids I've encountered seem to only last a short while.
Do you have spaghetti worms (these build tubes made of sand) or hair worms (no tubes, lots of tentacles)? Honestly, you're probably not going to be able to avoid getting them in your new tank... They are good clean up crew, so I like them myself :)
They’re hair worms I guess no tubes and LOTS of tentacles !!
 
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AmandaMarie1116

AmandaMarie1116

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Also, your tank water will have minimal beneficial bacteria (bb), so while using it isn't necessarily a bad idea, it won't really help your cycle.
If you're worried about your rocks not having enough bb in the new tank, you can always add some filter sponges or something like Matrix to your current system for a while before the move, and use that material as your biological filter in the new tank
If you don't want to transfer anything over, you can't reuse any water from the previous tank
Thank you, not necessarily what I wanted to hear but I rather hear the truth rather than running into the same problem!!
 

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There are some non reef safe meds that will kill hydroids if you want to reuse rock and what not. It may kill the worms too I am not sure. You can also kill the worms by soaking the rock in really really low salinity salt water (like 1.014 or something like that)
 

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you're better off with new sand ,rock and water on the new tank.Had the same hydroids problem in an old tank, was really careful adding coral from old tank to the new one.Almost 6 months in and no hydroids or any pest.
 

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