Couple of Upgrade Questions

[Cbravo212]

I am going from my 26g to a 40g tank in the next week. I know, not much of an upgrade, but being a newb, I want all the help and experience I can get before I go big.

Here is what I have in my existing tank.
-20 lbs live crushed coral sand
-30 lbs live rock
-6 hermits - mixed
-2 turbo snails
-1 fancy serpent sea star - about the size of a quarter - hitchhiker
-1 emerald crab
-2 O. clowns
-1 flame scallop - wife wanted it
-Couple mushrooms
-Toadstool
-small polyps frag (what kind no clue)
-small colonly star polyps

I am running a koralia nano and koralia 1
some type of contraption that hooks to my old penguin filter that skims some of the water off the top.
not sure what this is doing because I have removed all filter media b/c I heard it was a nitrate factory.
-1 sm powerhead (maybe 150 gph)
-1 20 Watt 50/50
I am not running a sump or skimmer. All water test normal.


Here is what is being upgraded.
New tank with approx 25 lbs rock (I know I will have to cure it as it is out of the water)
sump
protein skimmer
metal halide lights (wattage or setup unsure as of now)

I would like to increase the sand bed. Can I mix old and new sand? If I use existing water, I will still have to make New SW (ro of course). Anything I need to know there since I will be mixing the two because of tank size increase.

Any help would be great. I would hate to loose what I have b/c of an upgrade.

[kraze3]

Sounds like you have a good idea on what you want to do. You can mix old sand with new. However, If you have a deep sand bed now i wouldnt. I would add new sand to the new tank and seed with some of the old.
You will be fine using as much of the existing water as you can and then adding some new for the new tank. Only 14 gallons difference.
I think your going to need some more powerheads. I have 3 maxijets in my 29 gallon tank at the moment.
Are you going to be curing the LR in a seperate tub or tank before adding in with your existing system?

[thegrun]

How old is your old sand bed? If it is more than 6 months, transfer a few cups of the surface sand into your new tank to seed the new sand. The rest of your sand should washed to remove the dead debris in it. If it is less than 6 moths old, you should be able to move it all over without washing it (but if it looks super cruddy, wash it). You can move your water over without any problems.

[Cbravo212]

Yeah I have to get a tub from the local wally world and plan on putting the koralia 1 and a heater in with it.

Gives me a good reason to upgrade my powerheads. Thanks for the advice.

[kraze3]

Just a thought, but you could use your old tank. Save you some $$$.

[Cbravo212]

My folks really want my old tank. They want to use it as a FW tank. With some good cleaning, would this be a problem. New filters of course.

The sand bed is approx 3 months old. One worry that I had is it is not a sugar sized sand. There seems to be a lot of crushed coral and shell in it.

The sand be is 2 inches max, so it is not very much. How much should I carry over to seed the new sand.

Forgot to mention that I have a white Watchman Goby and he is a trip.

[PRDubois]

Use new Fine sand and seed with some of the old.

Old tank can be used for FW just clean everything and use new filter media.

If you have a good LFS. Tell them you are moving to a larger tank and see if they will give you 20gal of water out of thier tank (Providing they have good water in thier tanks)

I went from a 20gal to a 72gal. Got 40gal from my LFS tank.
Put that water in the 72 with the rock and new sand.
Seeded the new sand with some of the old.
Added 20gal of new SW

Then it was just a matter of transfering the rock, fish , corals & water from the old tank.