tank upgrade help!

[Miltoncj]

Hello there,

I finally took the plunge and am going to upgrade from my Elos 70 to a 120.
Since I'm going to place the new system where the old is right now, will have to figure out how to temporarily house my livestock.

Talking and researching here I learned that's a demanding process but not that hard to pull of in a day or two. (keeping the fish/corals/rocks on a rubbermaid w/ pumps ans heaters for a couple days, transfer everything in with some new water to fill up the difference, etc...)

The thing is that I was trying to figure out a way to be able to take my time setting up the new tank ? find the perfect placement for it, install the light fixture on the ceiling, do some aquascaping, etc before I move all the fish and corals in.

Does anyone have a successful experience in keeping livestock in a temp container for a longer period than just a couple days? I was thinking even in creating a makeshift separate com compartiment and hook on my skimmer if it makes sense...

any advice?

thanks,

-m

 

[jedimaster1138]

I did exactly this a few months ago. New 120g where my 50g was. I can give you a few ideas on what to do and what not to do...Take them all with a grain of salt though.

First of all, you are very, very smart to want to take your time with the new tank. For all the effort and $ you are likely to spend on the new one, you probably want it to be perfect to start, especially when it comes to aquascape. As it was, I took my time with mine, but in hindsight, would like to have taken longer, especially with my OCD for things being perfect and in straight lines. Problem is the livestock who were kinda dangling in the temporary smaller tank I had set up elsewhere to hold them.

My advice, in brief, is this. Pretend you're moving. Move out the live stock - fish corals etc - into temporary buckets and bins. Then move your existing set up to someplace, hopefully nearby, that's out of the way of the new tank. Then put everyone back in the old tank, sump, skimmer, lights...the whole kit and kaboodle. With that back to close to the way it was, you'll have a stable situation with your livestock that you can then take your time setting up the new system. You can take weeks or even months now to get the new system going without having to worry about the health of your critters because really all you did was move their old house to a different spot. Yeah you have to put them in buckets and junk for the interim, but that's unavoidable.

I didn't use this approach. I set up a temporary 29g and threw all my fish and coral covered rock in a temporary tank i put on the floor. The rest of the rock went in buckets with heaters and power heads. I lost 3 fish and a handful of corals. I didn't run all my lights, no skimmer... etc. At least one of my fish died due to some bruising she got from either the lack of moonlights in the temp tank, or being netted to get her out of the original one. Which brings me to...

Some other tips...

Avoid netting your fish if at all possible. They hate it. Especially tangs, if you have any. Coral them with your hands into one of those tupperware type dealies. This mostly implies removing your rock and such first, but that's unavoidable when it comes to catching fish. YOU WILL NEED A FRIEND to help with this.

Make a lot of water. By a lot I mean however much you think you need when you started reading this? Double it.

Speaking of doubling things, triple the amount of time you think you might need to move everyone. Better to over-prepare than under prepare.

At least 8 rolls of paper towels. Extra buckets, extra heaters, extra power heads. Borrow from a friend. Oh and a mop. The floor is gonna get wet. Very wet.

If you do the above and essentially move the existing tank to a new spot for a while (also assuming you have room in your home to do that) you will not get the aquascape exactly the way it was before you started. Don't obsess over this, just get it so that the corals are getting close to the right amount of light / flow and the fish have room to swim and hide.

This one you're not going to like - prepare yourself for the possibility of losing some livestock. Moving creatures is stressful. It might happen, despite all the precautions in the world. Hopefully it doesn't.

Bribe a friend or friends to help. Beer and free food go a long way

Good luck, and have fun. It was rough when I did it. I had a friend helping me and it wasn't THAT bad really, that one Saturday, but the critical mistake I made was in staying in that smaller, temp tank with minimal equipment support for as long as I did (it wound up being 3 weeks). In hindsight I should have just moved everyone out, moved the 50 and stand and sump etc, then put everyone back in. Then I could have taken my time with the new set up and did a few things differently and probably would not have lost a few of the losses I had. Also, there's likely to be a delay with the new tank. Deliveries take time. Work/life/wife/kids/sleep get in the way. You might think you can plumb and whatever the new tank in a day... I did. It took a week and a half.

Most importantly - have fun. Think about how it's going to be so awesome when you're done and all that extra room you're going to have for more goodies

Post pictures and updates, lots of good people here will offer plenty of advice.

:lobster:

 

[Miltoncj]

hey, thanks do much for all the advice and such a detailed run on your migration experience.

I got the advice of emptying my 55g and moving it somewhere else before too and it sounds by far the most logical and safe idea. It's just going to be quite a hard sell to my wife :bigeyes:

Living in NYC I have obvious space limitations, but still can place it in my home office room. Right now that's my primary plan, but was thinking if it's necessary to keep the whole system running in the interim period between turning this one down and the full setup of the new system....

One of the reasons of I'm doing the upgrade is the chance I have for a clean start on corals. Couple months ago I was trying several methods to fight some annoyingly 2.5 - 5ish nitrate levels that wouldn't zero out and a mysteriously high Kh (hitting 17ish...). My livestock was fine even with the chemical imbalance but SPS wasn't thriving, going nice at first and bleaching out to the bone in a couple months...

After trying carbon/gfo, chaettos, I finally got a Zeoreactor and ran the full zeovit system. The low nutrient environment worked fine at first, but eventually decimated all my corals, living me with just a small zoa colony (which is looking better than ever, even with the nitrates spiking even higher after the initial phase of zeo).

With all that said, I don't blame Zeo for the meltdown (think my system had a lot of things I needed to figure out besides the nitrate) and am considering running it again. This time clean from zero on my new tank (which the only thing I'm planning to add from the old one is the liverock.)

So given that my livestock is basically fish, a bulb anemone and a couple shrimps and snails, I'm wondering if a rubbermaid wouldn't hold them comfortably for a couple weeks. (have 8 fishes: 2 clowns, a y.tang, a swallowtail angel, velvet damsel, red mandarin, mystery wrasse and a royal gamma basslet ? all ranging from medium to small...), along with some of the liverock to give them some hiding space.

Was even considering in adding a acrylic plate creating a chamber to place the skimmer and have some decent filtration which could potentially give me the chance of holding this temp setup for a month or so if I need to get a bit more time on the new system and cycle it since I'm considering to have all new water and sand on it. (I'll use my present live rock to seed it, but also want to add more since is much bigger tank, so it might demand some curing and add a some more of cycling time).

All and all, I want to get all the water parameters really neat and perfect this time, before I move back all the bioload the fishes bring to the system, and finally start bringing back corals in. And like you mentioned i think is really important to take my time to do so....

So the big question now is, do I go thru the trouble (and diplomacy with my wife) of having two fairly large tanks running in an apartment for a while, or create a nice functional makeshift tank (either with a skimmer in or large regular water changes) on a rubbermaid with a considerably smaller footprint....

But thanks again for getting me up to speed with your experience, I guess planning this sounds more stressing than doing it....and considering when I have it all up and running on the larger tank, it will really pay off...

Still tho, having a hard time deciding which way to go....

cheers,

-m