Cleaning my 40b the other week I noticed a Legitimate crack in the glass in a back bottom corner. So I started looking for a new tank, and thankfully ended up with a 65 gal. Got it cleaned up for the most part and went to work with the transfer, it was just as big a PITA as when I moved everything to our current apartment. When I moved to the place I'm in now in July I kept the same sand because I wanted to be sure my mandarin had enough to eat, this time I went with some new Caribsea live sand. I did this to cut down on any excess nutrients that moving my sand may stir up, I'm just going to keep doing additional pod seeding until I am sure they have re-established.
Gonna guess I had about 50 lbs of live rock in my 40b and I got another almost 10 lbs of live rock from a LFS who hooked it up at $3 a pound because they were out of dry rock. The 10 lbs I got were just small baseball sized nice open rocks. I used these small pieces to lift my larger rocks out of my sand to hopefully help increase flow under and through the rocks. I also went ahead and did most my rock work in the tank before I added sand, this way if I pull the trigger on a watchman and shrimp they don't end up crushed and toppling my tank. I tried to leave as much space around and through my rocks as possible, I tried to do this in my 40b but still ended up with my hand stuck in many spots trying to clean, so this time I left 2x the space I thought I would need. All said and done the rock is just a bunch of stacked caves and ledges and the rock only hits the back glass wall at one tiny point. Now when I was doing this move I only had the tank stand that my 40b was on, so no time to cycle a tank or anything like that.
What I ended up doing was filling my sump/fuge with as much of my tank water as I could, then added in all my livestock(except nass snails), then I filled containers with as much tank water as I could and put my liverock into the buckets of tank water. The night prior I started 25gal of new saltwater mixing. Moved the 40b off the stand and put the 65 in its place. Then I began the rock work while my wonderful girlfriend sifted through all my gross old sand to find my nassarius snails(thanks babe).
I couldn't do ALL of the rockwork before adding sand and water because 2 of the decent sized rocks I had had things attached, one had my nem and the other had my clam both verry attached. So I did as much as I could and planed it out as best I could for the rocks that still needed added in, then I added the live sand and slowly started filling the tank just like I would a planted FW tank, had to keep it clear as possible so I could add the fish right away. Once I had added all the original 40b water except for what was in my sump/fuge I tested the water to make sure the live sand didn't effect the water parameters and temp, when I was sure everything was the same I added in the rocks with my clam and nem and the 5 gal of water they were in, then finished up the rockwork.
The nem and clam looked happier in the tank than they were in the bucket, so I decided it was safe and added all the frags to the 65 and my Jebao 25 got plugged in. Then I plumbed the tank to the sump/fuge and began draining the sump water into the 65, the lowering water level made it very easy to catch all my fish and shrimp and toss them into the 65 as well. Now that there was flow in the tank and all the livestock was in there I could take a smoke break and relax a little bit. I put the 25 gal of new saltwater I had mixed up into the sump and into the overflow chamber(made sure it was as close to my existing water as possible) then I put my return pump to fill it into the 65 at a super slow rate and went and watched a movie.
When I came back I was sure the water had mixed well and slowly so I kicked the return pump on full blast and finished arranging the corals in the tank. This is day 3 after the transfer and everything is alive and looks happy. Now for the current fish list, equipment, and a Link to some pictures I took.
Fish:
2x blue/green chromis - 1x firefish - 1x skunk cleaner shrimp - 1x mandarin - 1x bangghai cardinal - 2x fkn cool clown fish
Gear:
1x Jebao 25 - 1x hydor korelia 650 - 1x Triton3 (return pump) - 1x ReefOctopus NWB-110 - 2x 150w HQI 14000k Ushio - 2x 36" T5HO 460nm Actinics - 1x 36" Orbit Marine LED(not a fan of this, I just use it for moonlight)
http://s142.photobucket.com/user/rickyd42069/library/
Gonna guess I had about 50 lbs of live rock in my 40b and I got another almost 10 lbs of live rock from a LFS who hooked it up at $3 a pound because they were out of dry rock. The 10 lbs I got were just small baseball sized nice open rocks. I used these small pieces to lift my larger rocks out of my sand to hopefully help increase flow under and through the rocks. I also went ahead and did most my rock work in the tank before I added sand, this way if I pull the trigger on a watchman and shrimp they don't end up crushed and toppling my tank. I tried to leave as much space around and through my rocks as possible, I tried to do this in my 40b but still ended up with my hand stuck in many spots trying to clean, so this time I left 2x the space I thought I would need. All said and done the rock is just a bunch of stacked caves and ledges and the rock only hits the back glass wall at one tiny point. Now when I was doing this move I only had the tank stand that my 40b was on, so no time to cycle a tank or anything like that.
What I ended up doing was filling my sump/fuge with as much of my tank water as I could, then added in all my livestock(except nass snails), then I filled containers with as much tank water as I could and put my liverock into the buckets of tank water. The night prior I started 25gal of new saltwater mixing. Moved the 40b off the stand and put the 65 in its place. Then I began the rock work while my wonderful girlfriend sifted through all my gross old sand to find my nassarius snails(thanks babe).
I couldn't do ALL of the rockwork before adding sand and water because 2 of the decent sized rocks I had had things attached, one had my nem and the other had my clam both verry attached. So I did as much as I could and planed it out as best I could for the rocks that still needed added in, then I added the live sand and slowly started filling the tank just like I would a planted FW tank, had to keep it clear as possible so I could add the fish right away. Once I had added all the original 40b water except for what was in my sump/fuge I tested the water to make sure the live sand didn't effect the water parameters and temp, when I was sure everything was the same I added in the rocks with my clam and nem and the 5 gal of water they were in, then finished up the rockwork.
The nem and clam looked happier in the tank than they were in the bucket, so I decided it was safe and added all the frags to the 65 and my Jebao 25 got plugged in. Then I plumbed the tank to the sump/fuge and began draining the sump water into the 65, the lowering water level made it very easy to catch all my fish and shrimp and toss them into the 65 as well. Now that there was flow in the tank and all the livestock was in there I could take a smoke break and relax a little bit. I put the 25 gal of new saltwater I had mixed up into the sump and into the overflow chamber(made sure it was as close to my existing water as possible) then I put my return pump to fill it into the 65 at a super slow rate and went and watched a movie.
When I came back I was sure the water had mixed well and slowly so I kicked the return pump on full blast and finished arranging the corals in the tank. This is day 3 after the transfer and everything is alive and looks happy. Now for the current fish list, equipment, and a Link to some pictures I took.
Fish:
2x blue/green chromis - 1x firefish - 1x skunk cleaner shrimp - 1x mandarin - 1x bangghai cardinal - 2x fkn cool clown fish
Gear:
1x Jebao 25 - 1x hydor korelia 650 - 1x Triton3 (return pump) - 1x ReefOctopus NWB-110 - 2x 150w HQI 14000k Ushio - 2x 36" T5HO 460nm Actinics - 1x 36" Orbit Marine LED(not a fan of this, I just use it for moonlight)
http://s142.photobucket.com/user/rickyd42069/library/
Last edited by a moderator:
![](http://[URL="http://s142.photobucket.com/user/rickyd42069/media/IMG_09901.jpg.html"][IMG]http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r119/rickyd42069/IMG_09901.jpg)
![](http://[URL="http://s142.photobucket.com/user/rickyd42069/media/IMG_09921.jpg.html"][IMG]http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r119/rickyd42069/IMG_09921.jpg)
