moving to a new tank

This is not an emergency but in 2 days someone is buying my 75 gallon saltwater and I am getting a 72 bow front. I am keeping a few coral and I am starting over with my live stock other than a few of my favorite corals. all my rock will be reef saver so it will be dead and I wont have any bacteria on them. sould i just put the water from the 75 into the 72 gallon? or any other ideas will hlp with my move of tanks.[the corals are a candy cane coral, elegance coral, and mabe a montipora]

 

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superfishy45

If it where me, I would make sure the 72 was in place and set up before parting with the 75
the rockwork in the 75 is your biological filter, so you need to be keeping as much of the rockwork as possible, if you intend to transfer corals into the 72

the water itself, whilst cost effective to save it or as much as possible, is not as important as saving the bacteria laden rockwork

if you can get the 72 in place 1st
you can start transfering water to holding tubs, and then locate your live corals in those
then you can start transfering water from the 75 to the 72
as the water level lowers, begin transfering rock from the 75 to the 72
once everything is transfered from the 75 to the 72- you can then replace your corals in their new home

leave the sand bed - and get new sand for the 72
do not lower water level to far in the 75- leave about 1 inch or so covering the sand bed

make up 10 gallons of new salt water, that way you can afford to waste 10 - 13 gallons of old water, which you can use to rinse your existing rockwork, before placing it in the 72 (might as well start off, with clean rockwork as you have the opportunity)

Steve

 

ok thanks steve, I sorta want to have a nice clean looking new set up. so if I put my live rock in my sump will it seed the dead rock. if so how much of the live rock should I put in the sump

 

that would certainly help

at present your 75 accomodates just what is required in terms of bacteria, for the inhabitants of the 75

thus if you wanted to keep all the existing livestock from the 75, you would need to keep all the live rock

if you wanted to keep about 50% of the livestock, then keeping approx 50% of the live rock should suffice

you could not keep to much rock IMO, but you could keep to little
in that the live rock kept for a short time would not have adequate bacteria population to maintain the livestock - bacteria would increase within a short period of time, but you may experience Ammonia and Nitrite in the mean time, which is not ideal for the livestock you want to keep

what you could do is

transfer as much rock as you can accomodate
and then once the new rock is in the 72, you could start removing pieces of the old live rock from the sump
done in stages so that bacteria lost, is compensated for by bacteria on the newer rock

Steve

 

sounds good