Upgrading from 10 to 20

[beenaught]

Hello everyone! Hope all is well. I bought a new 20 gallon tank to upgrade from my 10gallon. I’ve done this plenty of times with my fresh water but first time doing so in salt water. I’ve seen some threads about not using old sand vs washing it. Some background to what I have,
I have mostly soft corals: hammers, anemone, pulsing xena, and a mushroom. I currently don’t have temporary homes/tanks and the upgrade will take the same spot. Is this a bad idea to do in just day? If not, should I use old and new sand? Odds fish did when adding 10 gallons of new water? Should I maybe add a couple of gallons to avoid shocking the fish and just keep the tank on a lower level of water and just gradually add water? Or is this just completely a bad idea. Any advice helps! Thanks!

 

[beenaught]

And to add, I do have about 8 pounds of live rock

 

[officialreefbros]

Hopefully someone with more experience can chime in, but I'd try the following
- Get new sand and put it in the 20
- Make water for a large WC
- take some water out in a container for for livestock
- if you can grab them 1st it would be great or once you trasfter some water to the new tank
- Transfer rock, coral, water without mixing up your sand
- add livestock back in

I had a tank crack and did most of that in a panic lol

 

[betareef]

How deep is the sand bed?

If it is only shallow, and the sand is well aerated, and gets disturbed by cleaning crew etc, then I would just reuse it. If it is a deep bed with anaerobic areas at the bottom, I would use new sand and seed it from the top layers of the old sand.

As for the water, I would view it as a 50%+ water change. Something you might do if you have run into problems. If your tank water and the new water are fairly close in parameters, I think it will be fine.

 

[beenaught]

It’s fairly shallow. But it has a lot of aeration. I don’t really have a clean up crew, just a sand sifting starfish to toss it but I do water changes weekly and haven’t seen anaerobic areas from what I can tell