Tank upgrade / move

[Fishamatank]

Looking for opinions on what to do with the sandbed(s) in my tank when I move from the current 55 to the new 120.
The tank has only been up for about 4 months, but I have a lot of healthy corals and hate to loos anything. The sand bed in the main tank varies from 1" to 3" or so in places. The sandbed in the fuge is 5-6".
Should I just scoop the sand out into the new tank, or should I try to rinse in old tank water?
How long should I wait before moving live stock into the new tank? I have to =completely disassemble the current tank as the new tank is going in the same place, so keeping both running for weeks is not really an option. The best I could do is keep things in tubs with powerheads for a few days, but I don't know if that is worth the trouble or not...

TIA

Craig

[Gold Stripe]

Ideal is to start doing 10 gal water changes every few days for a couple weeks and save the water. If you cant do that then just save all the water from the 55.

Scoop 1 inch off the top of your sand before removing any rock and set it aside. Then tear down the 55 and set up the 120. Rinse the leftover sand (NOT THE 1 INCH) very well and put it, the rock and the water from the 55 in the 120. Then spread the 1 inch that you aset aside back on the top of your sandbed.

Fill the 55 or other container with new salt water, heater, powerheads as if you were setting up a QT and put your livestock in there. Throw in some pvc fittings if you have fish so they will have somewhere to hide. Plan on doing a heavy water change every other day on this tank until you transfer everything to the 120. Critical that you match temp and salinity since you will be changing a lot of water.

Let the 120 run for a couple days and keep a close watch on the amonia. If you have enough live rock you shouldnt get a spike but watch it anyway. After 3 or 4 days min, transfer livestock to 120.

[Fishamatank]

Wouldn't it be a good idea to leave a few pieces of LR with the livestock for some bio filtration?