Combining Tanks

LuckyInk

Reef Painter
Hi everyone.
This weekend is going to be a busy one. I have noticed a small leak in my 29 gallon reef tank. Soooooo I am going to replace it with a 40 gallon breeder. I like the size of the 40b and it fits nicely on my DIY stand.
Anyone have any tips for combining my 29 gal and my 46 gal pentagon?
I have about 90 some lbs of live rock between the two and the following livestock:
1 yellow tail damsel
1 maroon clown
1 tobacco basslet
1 sixline wrasse
1 flame angle
3 blue green chromis
Skunk cleaner
peppermint shrimp
serpent star
multiple snails and hermits
and one big @$$ purple longspine urchin

Coral:
canycane coral
bubble anemone
branching frogspawn
numerous mushrooms
green star polys
TOO MUCH XENIA ELONGATA
pink pulsing xenia
kenya tree coral
a few gorgonian frags
a huge rock of zoos

I plan on doing this tank as a bare bottom, and want to move my aragonite sand in the 29 gal to my refugium. I have silica sand in the pentagon tank and that crap is going out to the garden!
Anyone have any tips or steps to follow during the move? I have a pretty good idea as to how it should go down, but would love your input. I plan on doing this over the course of two days, so I should have plenty of time.
Thanks in advance everyone!
-Lucky
 

Flipper

Sturgeon General
This is a detailed description of what I did changing out my work tank. Smaller scale, of course, but maybe something will be useful to you. This is from a post I wrote a few weeks ago. HTH:

"I killed the power on all the appliances, and then began scooping the water into a styrofoam fish box (one of those they ship the fish in). I moved the rock and shrooms into the box and finished removing the top two-thirds into it, so the rocks were covered. I caught the ocellaris and dottyback easily with a bag (I never net my fish), and moved them to a specimen container, and covered it. I put that under a desk in the dark to minimize stress. I caught the serpent, and he went into, well, a 20 ounce coffee cup with a lid. Lastly, I removed the hermits.

Next I set the new tank in place, with a new inch of Southdown in the bottom, and removed the remaining water and existing sand to the new. As I began to get the tank filled, I started moving pieces of rock back. This was the hardest part, as I couldn't see through the 'milk' at this point (you all know Southdown!!!). I got the heater, skimmer and power head into position, and fired them up.

After the dust cloud had cleared just a bit, the animals went back in. Of course my clown has been swimming around the front all night since returning, but the dotty is still in hiding. I suspect I'll see him on Monday morning."

Good luck with the transfer!!! :cool:
 

LuckyInk

Reef Painter
What a night!
I started the transer last night at about 6pm, and got everything combined at 11:30pm! And ofcourse, my 4 month old decided he wanted to get up at 3am this morning!!!! So far I still need to aquascape and make the canopy, so pics will be up soon!!! But for now... Coffee and breakfast!
-a very tired Lucky
 
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