Upgrade Already! Need Advice

[Joshthenosh]

Hey all only been in the hobby a month. what ive learnt is that small tanks are harder to keep as parmeters chane easily. and it limits fish size a lot, i have a 17 Gallon ( Euro) that i thought was quite big but its actually a Nano, So far the tanks recently Cycled and i only have a clean up Crew in.

Yesterday i Saw a tank on ebay which is double the size which came with a nice cabnit and a sump, i expected the winning bid to be around £300 (english pounds) but i Just won it for an astonishing £100 (roughly $168) This is the Link to the Item. i expect i can get at least half that back selling my brand new cabnit and tank, so its barely cost me anything.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7742645773

i think its about 39 Gallons

What i want to know is would it be best to transfer the water from my cycled Tank with LR etc and then just top up with Ro water of the same SG, obviously i wil need more LR and put my Clean up crew in a better home over the transfer?

Will it need to cycled again?

[BenH98]

Technically it shouldn't cycle... but who knows with this new tank, it could have some weird chemical or oil in it that would make it cycle again. Just make sure you keep testing...

[Andrew]

To add to above, when you would add more rock to the tank, you could cause it to cycle again. I would recomend testing the water only because your water levels may be a little off.

[BurntOutReefer]

you will get a mini cycle when you add the new live rock.....

[gibbswagon]

good luck

[Joshthenosh]

what is the best way to transfer, my idea was transfer the water in the old tank to new tank, then use the old tank to mix more ro and salt then transfer again etc? i guess i could put the clean up crew in the sump till eveythign is transfered

[One Eyed Bunny]

First, congratulations on the new tank and all of that equipment.

Second, yes, you'll have a mini-cycle when you swap the live rock and water from the one tank to the other. It'll be small and short, but it still my be enough to hassle your inverts. Just keep testing the water as if you were expecting it to be a normal cycle and keep an eye on your inverts.

G'luck, and congratulations once again.

[examiner]

That's a standard size for a 55 US gallon tank, assuming it's 18 high and 12 wide. So plan your water and salt needs accordingly!

As you transfer over, I'd just take the approach that you are starting from scratch (especially if you add new live rock). If you purchase fresh live rock, I'd cure it in another vat of some sort. Otherwise, you can definately expect a new round of cycle time.

[Joshthenosh]

luckly i have a place near me that has fulled cured live rock for sale in a massive tank that has fish living with the rock, when i added this last time in increased the speed of my cycle, hopefully it will again