Also, I got some good questions from someone through PM and I think it's worth posting them here, along with my answers.
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I'm sure you get plenty of PM's from people but I was hoping to steal some of your time and advice.
I have a couple of questions about how you've transferred your livestock into the temp housing and such because I'm looking at doing the same thing for my tank, rescape, new rock and a different direction but on a much smaller scale.
Sure, no problem.
Just know that this is the first time I've done this.
Well... i did move my old cube from my house to a buddy's shop in one day with their help, but I made the mistake of reusing the sand, and without washing it. Big mistake. Don't do that.
How did you cycle the holding tank?
First, let me start by saying that I "attempted" to cycle the tank. But I didn't test a thing other than salt levels. Since I was going to be transferring everything but the sand and some water to this tank, I'm not really sure how much it really needed to cycle, but I attempted it as an extra safety measure. So what I did was fill it with all new water and I tossed in a pump just for circulation. My main pump was still running the tank. I also through in a couple pieces of rock from my sump and a cup of sand. After about a week or so, I got a bacteria bloom (cloudy water) which is consistent with a cycle. Sometime after that, I tossed in another bit of sand, just to keep things going. It was running for maybe 4 weeks by the time i did the transfer. It was at this last minute that I shut down the old tank, stole all the pumps, chiller, plumbing, etc and got everything hooked up to this holding container. For about 36 hours the old tank ran on nothing but my Vortechs. I also did a big water change at this point, filling with water from the old tank. I know the water doesn't carry bacteria and its really just dirty water but I did it anyway. There was no skimmer running in the temp tub this whole time so that was my reason for the water change.
Did you acclimate things when you transferred them over or was it a much quicker operation than that?
Temps were similar. So everything came out of the old tank and went straight into this container.
Rock/Coral first, then the old tank was drained about 90% and I was able to net the fish. They also went straight in.
All the old sand was put into black garbage bags and put out with the trash.
Are you just running it like a normal setup but in a tub?
As normal as possible.
The only thing not running right now that was running before is my auto water changes. The equipment is all in place, I just haven't had time to test it.
Will probably do that this weekend.
The other difference, which I figured out last night, was that my pH plummeted! It was down to 7.35 with a high of about 7.5.
I realized that since everything was basically circulating within one container (even though the pump was sucking water out, sending it to the chiller and back to the tub) I wasn't getting enough aeration.
I had even had the skimmer outflow exiting beneath the water surface due to the splashing noise. So I removed that elbow and let the output from the chiller agitate the water surface and now it's already back up to 7.63 in just a few hours.
When you put your system back together again are you planning on doing the same cycle for the main tank and then transferring stock back into the tank just like a normal tank transfer?
Yeah, i'll probably let the tank cycle a bit.
I'll be adding a whole new batch of sand from Tampa Bay Saltwater so things will need a little time to settle down in there.
This is assuming everything is doing ok in the tub.
