Buying an established tank

[mattdawe]

Hi everyone

I’ve been out of the hobby for probably 15 years now. Looking to get back in. I have the opportunity to purchase an already established 90 gallon tank.

Details

Tank
Stand
Sump
Multiple heaters
2 powerheads
Reef octopus skimmer
Radeon Xr15 pro (two of them)
Approx 100 lbs of liverock
A few corals/anemone
Bunch of fish, probably more then should be and I may try to sell some locally during the move.
Live stock:
- Pair of Blue Cheek Triggers
- Pair of Black Phantom Clown fish
- Starry Blenny
- Valentini Puffer
- Royal Gramma
- Pj Cardinal
- 2 Black Bar Chromis
- Bicolour Angel
- Coral Beauty
Inverts
pile of Test kits, additives, etc

In my limited research it looks like a decent setup for the price ($1500 CDN..approx $1200 USD)

Anyway, I’m trying to work out how best to move it from her house to mine. Planning to setup a small tank and moving a few pieces of rock and all the fish into it while I move the display…should only be a day or two.

I want to replace all the sand in the tank. Will that cause the tank to cycle again? Planning to keep the liverock submerged and heated in totes.

Should I take as much water from the existing tank or should I mix new water?

I’ve read multiple posts about moving tanks from this forum but any tips or ideas would be welcome…photo attached

 

[blaxsun]

Are the Radions G4s or G5s? (guessing probably G4s) What kind of tank is it? You could always inquire about the aquascape, corals and fish - get yourself a new tank setup ready to go and transfer that.

When I upgraded to a larger tank I got one of those black rubbermaid livestock troughs and moved my rock, heaters and wavemakers into it. You could probably do something similar by transferring as much water across as you can, ie: let them do a 20% water change then keep the water in 5-gallon buckets for you to startup your transfer tank.

Definitely allow for more time. You may find you want to replace the substrate, do some scraping/cleaning in the tank or you might run into an issue with setup. Nothing every goes quite as smoothly as we'd like.