In transition between tanks - Ammonia / Nitrite spike???

[scottkel]

I am in transition between tanks - sold my 180g - and waiting for delivery of new 50g cube. I sold everything with the 180g except about 15lbs of LR which I have in my temporary setup (30g long). I used my original water with the LR and I have a heater and lights still running. I have my fish in this setup awaiting the new setup that I will get up and running to get the cycle started.

Problem - checked my paramaters and I have an Ammonia spike... I did a 20% water change in my temp tank to help the fish...


Could this be trying to cycle?

 

[slugwall]

Anything is possible... When you kept the live sand did you rinse it before adding it back into the temp tank or is it new sand in the temp tank?
Fish could be stressed and making them waste more...did yOu add the fish after the tank was settled from adding sand then rock? There is always going to be dust off of the rock too... You may be going through a mini-cycle...

 

[scottkel]

I didn't keep any of the live sand, only a few pieces of the live rock so the fish could hide. I didn't add any new sand to the temp tank either - barebottom with the LR right now. New sand will be added to the new tank along with a few pounds of old to help seed the new sand.

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[Russellaqua]

What is the fish load? It's possible that without sand there are too many in the 30 gal temp tank, especially if you kept enough stock for the new 50 gal, for the rock to handle. The extra 20 gallons in your cube that's coming would help dilute the waste a lot.

 

[scottkel]

I know that the fish load is on the high side for the 30g temp tank - about 4" foxface, 4" blue hippo, 2-3" powder brown, smaller yellow tang and smaller lemon peel. Everyone seems to be doing okay in the smaller tank so far.

Maybe I should have kept some sand for the temp tank - too late now I guess. Maybe with the larger volume and biological filtration (LR and LS) kept things leveled.

Should I just keep an eye on parameters and do water changes to keep the bio load down until the new tank gets up and cycled?

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