Tank Transfer

BigNasty402 · Dec 30, 2015

Planning on doing a transfer from my biocube to a 20 gallon long sometime in the next few days. Just seeing if anyone has a guide or ideas to make this go as smooth as possible. Thanks in advance

reesed5 · Dec 30, 2015

If you have live rock, put it in the bucket with the fish. As long as you only take a couple hours for this, everything should be fine in buckets. Try to get your levels as close to your bio cube as possible.

FishAddict87 · Dec 30, 2015

And I would recommend using new sand. There are a lot of bad bacteria that builds up in your sandbed. Good luck!

saltyfilmfolks · Dec 30, 2015

Keep a powerhead in the rocks bucket. I rinsed my sand with ro and saltwater. I like to "cap" it with new live sand.(but I dsb) theres a lot of good bacteria in there. The ro wont kill it. it will remove the rotten food and poo.
Keep an eye on the temps in the buckets and the new tank. Save the old tank water and keep the rock and fish and corals in. add it back in with some new.
new live sand is fine to use immediately, its cycling. the rock and tank water will help keep the established bacterial population established.

Chrisfish · Dec 30, 2015

saltyfilmfolks said:
Keep a powerhead in the rocks bucket. I rinsed my sand with ro and saltwater. I like to "cap" it with new live sand.(but I dsb) theres a lot of good bacteria in there. The ro wont kill it. it will remove the rotten food and poo.
Keep an eye on the temps in the buckets and the new tank. Save the old tank water and keep the rock and fish and corals in. add it back in with some new.
new live sand is fine to use immediately, its cycling. the rock and tank water will help keep the established bacterial population established.

Do you need to rinse the live sand?

brandon429 · Dec 30, 2015

that depends only if you want silt to remain, rinsing isn't antibacterial at all.

saltyfilmfolks · Dec 30, 2015

some do. Don't know why. Its the same stuff thats in a bottle.

BigNasty402 · Dec 30, 2015

I'll keep you guys posted

FluffyxTxRex · Dec 30, 2015

GL... im transferring everything from my 75 into a 120 this weekend!

BigNasty402 · Dec 30, 2015

FluffyxTxRex said:
GL... im transferring everything from my 75 into a 120 this weekend!

Nice! Best of luck

brandon429 · Dec 30, 2015

the current sandbed is the total risk in the transfer. when you remove the corals and rocks don't stir the sand up then for obvious reasons (another reason its common to go with all new sand as well)

once the fish and corals are out then the curr sand can be dealt with, to me that's the crux. if the curr live rock being moved isn't crudded up with organics then all should go well using this order of ops

BigNasty402 · Dec 30, 2015

Im just going to forget about my sand currently in the biocube. Use some of the water and the live rock. I'll pick up a fresh bag of live sand today. Don't really like the black sand I have right now anyways

melev · Dec 30, 2015

Have plenty of saltwater available. Then as you remove rock from the old tank, you can shake it out in used saltwater to release trapped detritus within, and move the "clean" rock into the new tank. A new bag of livesand sounds ideal to me.

Have plenty of towels handy.

BigNasty402 · Dec 30, 2015

melev said:
Have plenty of saltwater available. Then as you remove rock from the old tank, you can shake it out in used saltwater to release trapped detritus within, and move the "clean" rock into the new tank. A new bag of livesand sounds ideal to me.

Have plenty of towels handy.

Lucky me I saved a few buckets of used saltwater. I like that idea, thanks!

brandon429 · Dec 30, 2015

Just recently in a very large tank clean pm here my friend RK had some recycle event due to live rock detritus decaying in holding bucket

When moved to holding buckets if enough detritus is dislodged that can cycle the holding container. If fish are in there, problems. For the true safety work based on this pm it's prudent to isolate the live rock too from the sensitives

Tank transfers are usually repeated easily but it goes without fail that detritus stores are at the heart of most recycles if not directly from death of an animal or group of them