Help - steps to safely downsize tank

jtran012279

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I'm downsizing my 90 gallon to a 30 gallon and I was wondering is there a safe way to transfer it over to the 30 gallon without anything being killed?

rocks, sand, fish, etc

I tried finding an article but had no luck
 
Using your old water or the majority of it would be key. Are you transfering tanks only or location?
 
I wanna keep some of the rocks, some soft corals, and 3 fish. Water is easy to keep however I heard don't mess or stir up the live sand and. Don't let the rocks out of the water. Pretty much if I took things from my big tank and moved it to a smaller tank would things die off? Or what steps should I take to move over things
Smoothie;371020 wrote: Using your old water or the majority of it would be key. Are you transfering tanks only or location?
 
Stir the sand right before a water change to suck alot of the buikd up out before you transfer things over. All reaaly depends on how nasty it is. Would be fine if you got all new dead sand and added a small amount of your existing sandbed to it on top to seed it.
 
If your current parameters in the 90 are good, then I suppose it would make things a bit easier to use some of the water to fill the 30. If the water is less than ideal - then don't move the problem from one tank to another.

Rock is fine out of the water for a couple of hours without any significant die-off.

Sand - if you've been in the habit of vacuuming it regularly and your water params are good, you can move some of the sand if you wish - scoop it out of the old and into the new.

If you've had any ongoing issues with phosphate/nitrate, IMO it would be more prudent to lose that sand and get new.

Try to move the sand promptly - right after the rock (put rock in the new tank FIRST, place it on the glass - we never recommend putting rock on top of sand for a bunch of reasons).

If the sand is left in a tank without water movement (stagnant) the bacterial bed dies off surprisingly quickly - so if you can do that within a couple or three hours you'll be fine, but if it sits longer than that, I'd ditch the sand and get new.

If the new tank is being put in a different spot from the existing tank, the whole move shouldn't be too difficult.

Jenn
 
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