tank breakdown/rebuild

Ok here goes nothing.
So i have had a 29gal biocube running for about a year and a half Its doing well and im growing some nice corals in it. I like the tank but have two other tanks and am wanting to do something unique with this tank like a macro tank or starfish and urchin tank. I can sell some of the corals and move some over to my other tanks. I really want to redo the aquascape because i feel there is too much rock in this tank. Its quickly filling up with coral. The rock thats in it now 90% base rock and is not very porous. :-/ When i ordered the rock for my new 40gal breeder tank, i ordered BRS Pukani Dry Eco Rock and ordered way too much. So i want to use this rock in my 29gal now and get rid of the current rock thats in it. I have also been wanting to move the tank because right now its in a hallway type area and i dont look at it enough yeah know
So when i take the current LR out and replace it with new dead base rock, i will get another cycle right? So i need to move or sell the inhabitants, right?
LMK what yall think.

 

If you are buying base rock(not live), I would not bother to remove inhabitants from the tank.

You may experience a mini-cycle(diatoms), but when I moved my tank from one house to the other...I also replaced the sand and added rock. All i saw for a cycle was diatoms and a small bit of hair algae on a shell.

I would expect the same experiences to occur in this situation.

 

You can do that, or you can add a piece of dry rock let it sit for a week or two, and then take out a piece of old rock and continue that process until all the old rock has been removed. A better idea would be to simply cycle the dry rock in a bucket/tub of some sort, then once cycled, just add as necessary and remove the old stuff. You will still want to be careful with the livestock you have in there though and don't add any new fish that will increase the bioload.

 

That can work for larger tanks or tanks with a large amount of rock in them (not respective to the tank size), but I've ordered rock from BRS before and while it is dry and fairly clean, it will still cycle just fine w/o adding anything else. With this sized tank, I would worry that the added die off from the rock, and there will be some die off, will still cause a cycle.

When I cycled just the dry fiji rock in a 5 gallon bucket, my ammonia got up to about 5-7ppm w/o adding anything else, just rock and water, so I would imagine this would be similar.

 

How would one cycle these rocks in a tub? What would i need as far as equipment? I would assume a heater and a koralia. Anything else?
Oh and also i will prolly be epoxying some rock together, which should obviously be done before cycling the rock right? And also because of molding them together it may be difficult to slowly swap out the live rock for dead rock?

 

...sorry; I see you said "dead base rock", not dry rock. My recommendation was referring to dry rock(not live/never been in water).