cycling and seeding

[brunet1234]

I am bout to setup my new 125 gal tank. I'm going to use the water from my established 55 gal tank along with some sand and the rock I have. Is it safe to put my fish in there or should I give it a few days. Or longer. Will seeding it prevent a seriously dangerous cycle to all my fish or will it be the same as starting brand new? Thanks for the advise

[jrr98002]

Give it a few days to a week or so to let everything reestablish itself. You will have a minicycle no matter what, although it won't affect your critters really and should subside in a couple days. You said 'some', does that mean you're also using some new dry rock in there? Is the rock you're speaking of cured and live? The water will have minimal bacteria. If you're only using a partial amount of what you had them in before, you might not have enough bacteria build up for the old full load, so you might want to give it a little while to build up. But it honestly shouldn't take very long if the rock you speak of us cured live rock and what you had in there before in the other tank.

[brunet1234]

The tank is going to full of rock that was in an established tank. The some part was referring to my sand since I am going to have to get some more sand it put in the new tank

[Mishri]

So.. full rock from an established tank? What live stock was that rock supporting? If there was nothing but rock in it for a long time there might not be much bacteria on it.

If the tank was fully stocked, and you aren't keeping the fish that were in it, you could probably put your fish in right away. Worst thing that could happen is if there is ich in the tank that the other fish were immune to, you could get an ich out break.

If there were no fish in it in the past 90 days, with 125g and if you have 100+lbs of live rock I'd test water parameters after like 6-12 hours. make sure everything looks good (ammonia).. that you didn't get a bunch of die off during the move. Then I'd slowly move live stock from 1 to the other. -depending on the fish... With a 55 gallon id expect you don't have a bunch of messy fish. If you had a pair of tank raised clowns i'd start with them, watch ammonia, checking a few times a day if possible, do water changes if it hits .25 till you get it down (it would take probably 2-3ppm ammonia to harm tank raised(born) fish, but anything above .25 can cause harm to gills, so better not to risk it)

-I expect you wont even see .25ppm ammonia with a lot of good rock and that much water to dilute it, your little fish wont do much. Now if you have a tang that had outgrown the 55g this might be a different story. so depends on your live stock.


That is my "dangerous" advice, based on how i've done it for the past 26 years. Others will tell you to do an ammonia additive cycle which works fine too- but I think it spikes ammonia too high, with the fish method ammonia doesn't get that high (If it did it would kill the fish and you'd have to start over, done properly it shouldn't even really hit .25ppm)

[brunet1234]

I planned on transferring all the fish I currently have over to the new tank but I'm gonna give it a few days and just put my three damsels over and see how they do

[coralsnaked]

If all rock is old cycled well used rock and is taken to new location in tank water there should be no die off to create a cycle. But the sand would be the problem., Use dry reef grade sand and rinse and drain well before using and throw out the old sand. Also use some prime for a few days to lock up any ammonia that could possibly creep up and all livestock should be fine.

[brunet1234]

So don't do the sand seeding?

[jrr98002]

You can use the old sand if you want, but the one issue that sometimes arises from that is that sand gets all kinds of settled detritus in it even with a good CUC stirring it so sometimes you can get an ammonia spike if you use sand that's 'dirty'. I've done it both ways (used completely new sand once and used partial old sand once) and never had a problem either way. You just might want to check ammonia if you use partial old sand just to be safe.

[brunet1234]

Recommend live sand or no for the new stuff?

[coralsnaked]

Only a cup to seed added to dry reef sand but No on re-using more old sand

[brunet1234]

would you recommend me cleaning the live rock before I transfer it over? some of the rock I am considering to be going to be putting in the new tank someone wants to give me and its covered in algae right now out of water. would you recommend rinsing it off or just not using it at all.

[jrr98002]

You can take a brush and try to remove as much as you can if you want. That's what I generally do with excessively algae-covered rocks I want somewhat cleaned. It won't remove it all but it'll help some.