Red Sea 425xl Upgrade

[Hunter90 HD]

Good afternoon all,

I am after a bit of advice upgrading my current 25gal tank which contains a mixture of LPS, SPS and Soft Corals along with a Yellow Wrasse, Filefish and 2 clownfish.

I have my new Red Sea 425XL tank setup and currently getting to salinity 1.026.

This is a video of my new Red Sea 425XL running alongside my current tank which has been running for 7months.

I am going to cycle my new tank using the Brightwell XLM in conjunction with MicroBacter quikcycl to hopefully have the tank 'cycled' certainly enough anyways to start adding fish.

Once my new tank has cycled i am wondering what would be the best approach to transfer my livestock.

My current logic..

My current fish would be impossible to catch as there are too many hiding spaces and not enough space to place a device in the tank to catch them..

If i move fish from my current tank and place into my new tank i would loose the bio-load currently on my filter media so ideally i want to transfer the fish along with the biomedia in my current tank so the bioload should be matched already in my new tank setup.

I think the best and safest way to transfer would be to cycle my new tank as advised above, then start moving my LPS and Softies across to the new tank also moving my current seeded rock from my old tank to new for bacteria benefits (also some corals are attached).

I believe my softies and LPS would be okay but my concern is with my SPS as i have a birds nest and Acopora corals which will not like the new tank water - Anyone got any recommendations on how to transfer these SPS corals?

When i have moved all of my softies and LPS & rocks to my new tank i was considering then moving my fish across as they will be easier to catch as the corals and rocks would all be removed.

Then i will move my current bio-media to my new tank along with my fish so balance the bio-load.

Does anyone have any tips or advice if this seems like a good plan or not?

I do have a concern with the SPS corals need some advice here please.

Thanks everyone.

Lee

 

[blaxsun]

That's how I moved mine. Corals and rocks first, then fish and inverts. Your SPS should also be fine. Just try to ensure the flow, water parameters and lighting in the new tank are replicated as closely as possible.

 

[Hunter90 HD]

That's how I moved mine. Corals and rocks first, then fish and inverts.

Thanks for the advise @blaxsun

 

[blaxsun]

No problem. Even with the rocks removes it still took me half an hour to catch all the fish because some of the little ***'s just didn't want to go. You'll also want to sift through your sand to find any hidden inverts, and this is a fairly messy process (so I left it dead last).

When you're moving the rocks, hold them out of the water for a minute or two for pest control (you may spot some bristleworms or other hitchhikers that you want to remove). Having a set of tweezers handy beforehand never hurts either.