Coral Life Support??????????????

JeepersReefers

JeepersReefers

Member
Next week i am tearing down my one year old reef tank, to up grade to a larger, nicer and drilled throu tank. I have set up 2 tanks in my garage that i was planning to use as a "life support" system to keep my live stock alive until the new tank has cycled. The tanks were going to have the same lights, skimer and other filters that im usuing right now. I was even going to use the water out of my current tank to try to make this less stressful on the creatures. But monday a friend told me that that was not a good idea, that i would loose most if not all of my corals in this move. He said "that I should trade ALL my corals and fish to the LFS so i get at least some thing out of them." I thought that i can keep them alive because dont they go throu more abuse getting shipped and stored at LFS?

BTW the corals are all softies or LPS.

Can this be done?

What have more experanced reefers done in my current situation?


THanks
 
Dennis7

Dennis7

Member
You can definitely do what you are planning. You probably don't even need to recycle your tank if you are using the same rock and substrate. I have done it and also plan on doing it again in a week or so. Just when you remove your substrate don't distrub it too much. Just keep an eye on your water parameters more closely for the next few weeks.
Many people have done this and many have moved their tanks without any lost or very minimal lost.
 
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brian_e

brian_e

Active Member
i moved all my sps lps and softys from 4 small tanks to a 320 and didnt wait for a cycle had no loses i used all the water from th eother tanks and a 150 gallons of new water
 
JeepersReefers

JeepersReefers

Member
Im repacing the current sillicate substrate with a west coast South Down equiviliant

The "life support" tanks will have rocks and corals only, no sand. Except in the refuge which wont be disturbed.


Thanks Dennis
 
sincityreefer

sincityreefer

Member
oh boy, sounds like its going to be a long couple of weekends. here we go... Your friend sounds like :apimp: its going to be kinda hard i think. I cant speak for the REAL veterans of the hobby, but i have attempted a move twice, and it was pretty ugly. my results were..... less than desireable.... But what can i say ill be there to :apint: and offer that "engineering" help... lol....
 
brian_e

brian_e

Active Member
and i used south down didnt wait for the tank to clear so i couldnt enven see my fish or corals for a few days
 
nigle

nigle

Member
Oi!

I agree with [above] you should not have a problem with transferring the items to the 'other' tanks. I assume that you will 'clean' the tanks first, HA!

I woud transfer the rock, coral, fish into one, and the substrate into another though. When you 'mix-up' the substrate [especially if it was a deep one] the different 'levels' of sand would have different levels of O2 in them. The top having more and the bottom having less. Different bacteria live in the different levels and when you 'mix' them up it will be like a big 'cycle' all over again. The rock, coral, and fish in one tank would be like a 'Berlin' system for the time they are in there with no problem to the 'cycling' process.

Once the new tank is ready to start cycling, put in any of the old substrate that you want to keep. It will be like seeding it with 'live sand' and it will need to 'cycle' with the new tank.


Once your new tank has cycled and stable, then adding the 'cycled' old rock and coral will be like adding new rock and coral. etc.


I would still hold off on adding the fish for a few weeks to the new tank just to make sure the transfer was stable. It will go through 'new tank syndrom' if you add the fish too fast into the 'new system'.

Other than that your idea for transferring is a good one. go for it!

Cheers!
nigle
!~!
 
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