Cycling Question

I was wondering what the difference between setting up a brand 90 gallon with 80 lbs of LIVE sand 30 gallons of mature water (8mths old) and doing a 60 percent water change on a 30 gallon? I ask cause i was thinking of tearing down my 30 gallon bio cube and placing all the live stock in a brand new 90 gallon with 80lbsof live sand and about 30-40 lbs of live rock from the 30 gallon. I would think between the 30 gallons of water, 80 lbs of live sand, and 35-40lbs of live rock it would be suffcient to call the tank *cycled* with all the mature bacteria id be adding to the 60 gallons of *New* water. Thoughts?

 

You will still go through a cycle. It may not last as long as if you where starting from scratch, but you will go through one. Keep something in mind, every time you add just one fish to a tank, you will go through a small cycle. Thats why its recommended to wait 1-2 weeks before adding another fish.

 

I mean, i understand theres gonna be a cycle when u add fish and such cause u are changing the chemistry to the water. Im just looking at it where its kinda not much different than doing a huge water change on an established tank. Im still using mature live rock, 4x the amount of live sand to accomidate tank size, and a third of the new tanks volume is replaced with mature water from the old tank. When i tore down my aqua medic 9 and replaced it with the bio cube 29 it was roughly the same ratios just on a 10 to 30 scale instead of a 30 to 90 ratio. I added my 3 fish from the 9 to the 29 the same day i bought the 29 using 20lb of live sand and the contents from the 9 as i tore it down and i didnt have a single casulty. Just seems im doing the same thing with the 30 to the 90 and wanted to see what people thought....

 

i have always went for like 2 weeks fully setup w/ live rock.... then added fish one at a time, couple days apart, testing levels everytime for ammonia spikes till it was all good

 

What type of fish and animals do you keep in the bio cube that you want to transfere to the new 90 ?

 

Water

The water is going to be no help. The bacteria is on and in the solids(sand and rock) Use all new water if you can. There are bound to be more of something you don't want (No3) and less of something you do want (trace elements) in the old water. I upgraded from a 135 to a 220 and was scared to use too much of the old sand because of stirring it up and releasing bacteria in the new system. I just added a small amount of the old sand to the new system to help seed it and then used all of the old rock. Next all new water went in. The system has been up for a year now and doiong very well. Just my 2cents
Scott

 

All the sand is new Live aragonite sand....80lbs. Rock is around 30-35lbs from bio cube. Fish i wanna throw in there is a flame hawk, maroon clown, royal gramma, lawnmower blenny, neon goby and a fire fish. Hermits and crabs.....no fish is over 4 inches in length

 

Everytime I've changed tanks I've just seeded new sand with old, and moved LR over, when I downsized I only kept about 10# of the old rock to transfer to the new tank and just used that to help keep parms stable then I moved it back to my QT tank.

When I setup the nano it cycled for about 2 weeks with the additon of the new rock and sand doing it this way, have had 0 issues with it so far though

Also when using new sand it may not be a bad idea to use some Stability or Prime to help get the bacteria growing a bit faster, just keep in mind it will make it look like it finished a cycle faster than it should have when you do your parm checks so drop in the chemicals, then wait a day and do a parm test