Upgrade is complete!

As some of you may have seen, a few months ago I posted a thread that an upgrade was on its way.75g to a 125g. It is now complete! Now with the very limited amount of space to work with we didn't really have the option to set the new tank and leave the existing tank running, so we planned it to do a one day switch.(It actually turned into a 2 day) My concern was just how big of a cycle was this going to cause.:-/
I will start with the pics of the stand that my fiance built a couple of weeks ago and explain how we did this switch as I go.

 

A few more. He is very handy!

 

Nice work! I plan on using tongue and groove knotty to skin my DIY stand as well. I like that rustic look.

 

Day 1 was a busy day for myself as Rob had to work. I had purchased 80lbs of key largo base rock from marco rocks and 80 lbs of dry sand.+ 1- 30 lb bag of caribea sea dry sand. When I recieved the rock a few weeks ago I had rinsed about 40lbs of it and put it in my display which already had about 100lbs of live rock. I originally wanted to use everything from the existing tank but was advised that reusing the substrate would most likely cause alot of problems. I started with rinsing and soaking the remaining rock and then started rinsing the sand. WOW,I have to say that was quite the workout.lol It took a good portion of the afternoon of stirring sand and siphoning. Only have 1 of pic of this. I threw in the next few pics just to show the limited space. I have to say I didn't get a whole lot of pics of the actual transfer. So I will have to just explain how we did it.

 

Once the tank was up and leveled we started by putting in the rinsed rock and sand. We had mixed up some fresh salt water the prior day so we added that as well to let that settle for the night. It was late and I had to work at 5 in the morning. A pic of our getto living room for the rest of the evening.

 

That is a great looking set up. I love long, shallow tanks

 

looks geat so far, what size tank was the old one, what size is the new one? oh i see the old one was 75...

 

New one looks like a 125

 

Being that I had to work till 3, Rob did some more preparing before I got home. He added a little more water and set up the new entertainment center which was going where the old tank was. Started testing a series of tests so we could match the new to the old. Temp, Ph, salinity, alkilinity, mag, calcium. My plan was to use as much of the existing water before it got all stirred up. Before we moved anything out of the tank we drained a tub full of tank water into a tub to put all our corals intnce that was done we started to pull top pieces of live rock and placing into the new tank. We left the bottom few pieces being they were in the sandbed and I wanted to keep the water as clear as possible. We then drained a few tubs and transfered water into the new tank. Left about 4 inches of water in the old one being my fish were still in there. Made it alot easier to catch them. We tested one more time and everthing was identical in both tanks. Then went the fish. They were my biggest concern. I first planned on putting them in our 10g quarentine and then drip acclimating them into the new tank. Then I called a a gentleman here that recently opened up a coral shop and runs our local reef club. I really didn't like the idea of putting my rather large yellow tang in a ten gallon tank for any amount of time with 5 other fish. He asked what the params were in both tanks at that time. Ph 8.2, temp 79, salinity 1.024 in both. The only difference was alkilinity old was at 8 and new was at 9. He said to just take them from one and put in the other and save them the stress of being in the crowded quarentine. I took the chance and transfered.( I think at this point I was the one that was stressed) They hid for about 5 min and then they were out exploring. This is a pic once everything was done. It was a little cloudy but alot less then I expected.

 

This is day 2