How can I not cycle the tank during upgrade?

[hellfire]

Alright, here is the deal. I have a 29G Biocube. It has about 30lbs of LR, and a 5in sandbed.

I just bought and setup a 120G tank. Finally after a full day of plumbing I have it up and ready with no leaks. Its full of new saltwater, and I have been letting it mix all day.

In about an hour, I'm picking up roughly 50lbs of LR, and 100ish lbs of sand.

How, or what do I need to do in order to not have to cycle this new tank? I figured obviously keep all my old water. But I've read a lot of opinions on whether I need to rinse my current sand, and the new "LS" out, or just put it right in.

Thanks in advance. I'm trying to get the sand and rock in tonight that I buy, and after the sand settles, swap everything else over tomorrow.

Tyler

 

[ralph atl]

I'm gonna do the same thing soon (although not as extreme 55-75), so what I'm going to do is buy live sand from a lfs or petsmart, get seachem prime & stability.

 

[tgray3]

Don't think you can, not have at least a mini cycle. If the LR you are picking up has spent any time out of water you will get some dye off and an ammo spike. The old sand bed is going to release a BUNCH of bad stuff when you stir it up moving it to the new tank and that will start a cycle also, so i would rinse it. IMO, have patience and go through the cycle.

 

[kzoo]

I would think with that much of an upgrade not having a cycle would be hard, it will help adding the old water and I would not use your old sand. Best to set it up and give it time to cycle or you will have problems.

 

[hellfire]

I've actually done the transition from a 55 to a 75 before. A couple years ago.

I simply transferred everything over, and bought some sand from someone else. Rinses it out well and that was it.

Basically your tank won't know the difference from that, and doing a water change. My situation though, with doing such a drastic changed, I'm a little worried.

Tyler

 

[kirru]

I went through no cycle, at least from my tests, and i upgraded from a 10g to a 40br. I used old sand that was rinsed and LR from the 10g and dry rock to fill in places It was done in about a day

 

[scrilla]

 

[hellfire]

Hmm.. Well I think I'm going to have to let it cycle..

The sand I got was pretty nasty, I rinsed it the best I could, multiple times. Probably took an hour or so.

I have all the rock in there now, and everything is running. I'll have to check back tomorrow morning and see how nasty everything looks. And check all the levels.

I don't want to put all the rock from the 29G in there, and leave it rockless for the fish in there..

So basically there is no way around cycling the tank I don't think.. Which really sucks.

Tyler

 

[jaustin]

I did a swap from a 65g to a 60 cube and i used all the LR and new LS and i am going through a small cycle 2 weeks later. I am not getting any spikes yet but i do have a white bacteria bloome. I'm fighting it now with a polly filter and a butt load of carbon changed daily in a TLF reactor. So far i've been testing every 4 hrs for amonia and it's not spiking. I've got water on stand by too.

It's hard to avoid a cycle. I've herd that the probio or how ever you say it works....the product in the glass ampulets.

Since your going to a much larger setup i don't think you can avoid a larger cycle.

 

[coolsurf]

I believe to have the best defense is to have the best offense. Not too long ago I upgraded and went virtually without a cycle and ended up creating one just to test the tank by adding ammonium chloride. I used all matured LR, some well maintained water out of another tank, well maintained live sand out of another tank and did not rinse it. If you rinse the sand, you lose all the beneficial bacteria you would be looking for. After a week + of waiting for any kind of a spike, I introduced ammonium chloride to test the tank and within 2 days, the tank was ready to go. To this day all my pars are great even though I keep my nitrates a bit up just for the clams. I can't say the same would happen for you but that was my experience anyway.

 

[texhorns98]

I moved everything from my 72 into the 120 with no cycle at all. Or if it did cycle, it did it overnight! This was using my own sand though and it was a 3 inch bed that was only 5 or 6 months old. Didn't rinse anything...just scooped it all into buckets and scooped it back into the new tank. I also added LR that I had been curing for 2 weeks, and kept the old rock submerged during the moving process.

 

[jaustin]

I just bought some stability today. I added it, hopefully that will help out with the white haze i've got now. All my params are fine to include ammonia nitrate and nitrite.

There is some good advice in this thread. Using other peoples water sand and some LR if your going to a larger setup. We'll see how well the stability helps out in my case where the bactera bloom is already in full effect.

 

[coolsurf]

A good product to consider is Fritz-Zyme as well. It's basically beneficial bacteria.

 

[hellfire]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

The rock I picked up has a ton of Majanos (*sp) on it anyways, so I am going to pick up some Peppermint shrimp to get rid of those. So I figure while I wait for that to happen, I'll just let the tank do its thing, and see what happens. I'm going to do water changes from my old tank into my new tank every couple days, just to get some good water in there.

Tyler

 

[notireef]

I doubt the peps are going to touch the majanos (peps get rid of aiptasia)...try kalk paste instead.

 

[hellfire]

I just pullled out each rock and blasted the majanos and aiptasia with boiling water. Worked **** well. Only have another 100 or so lbs to do... Haha.

Tyler