upgrade questions

Hey everyone I was planning on upgrading soon and I had a couple questions if you may be so kind to answer. I will be upgrading my 37 gallon tank to a 125 and I had some questions about how to go about it. A little background first... current tank is 37 gallons with about 37 lbs of liverock, bare bottom with rubble rock. I run a 10 gal. sump on this tank with an sca 301 skimmer, chaeto, mangroves, and gfo reactor. I have a 165w full spectrum budget led. Current stock is a pair or blue chromis, a firefish goby, a lawnmoweer blenny who is now eating flakes and frozen food, some snails other inverts and a few softies and lps.
Ok so heres my plan, I bought a reef ready 125 g and will be building a stand soon. Im sure you know that I cant wait to fill it. I would like to transfer my stock from the 37 and would like to go with sand on the bottom im not sure how deep yet. I plan on using live sand of varying sizes. Would it be a problem to add my livestock along with the live sand and put in clean dry baserock at the same time? I would be sure to cycle any live rock before adding it to the dt.All help appreciated, thanks!

 

If you were moving and had no choice, I would say it would be OK. Since you've got the time, take it. Here's what I would do:

- Get your new tank set up
- Drop in the sand and do a partial water change from your existing tank and put it in the new.
- Take a piece or two of LR from your existing tank and put it in - replace it in the existing.

At this point there should be no cycle and this can all be done fairly quickly.

- Get some hardy critters - hermits, pods - and some cured live rock and put it all in
- Let things sit for a couple weeks, see if there is any cycle. If there is, it should be minor. If not then do the move. If so, let the cycle complete then make the move.

 

+1 to the above. The existing rock that you have should be enough to handle the bioload that you will be transferring over to the new tank. As long as you do not increase that load no additional bacteria will be needed. I would do you additional stocking over an extended period of time. Looking forward to the build thread!

 

I recently upgraded from a 55 to a 220. I was able to get my 220 running while the 55 was at my old place. I got some new sand and some dead rock for the 220. I then stole some live rock and live sand from the 55 (wasnt alot) and added some table shrimp to start the cycle of the 220. About a month later, I made the transfer. Went very smooth. Was not as bad as I thought it would be. Its quite surprising how tough coral are.

 

Thanks guys, hope to start my stand this weekend.

 

Great advice.