Tank transfer and cycle

[FDchase]

So I’m upgrading my 14 gallon cube to a 120 gallon. I have about 120 pounds of sand, mix of dry and bagged live sand, roughly 60/40% dry to live. And maybe 20-30 lbs dry rock. I’ve started the cycle and ammonia has gone from 2ppm to 0-.25 over the course of a week and a half. Question is. Once I’m confident it’s 0 will I be safe to transfer my tank. I figure the bio load will be much lower because of water volume and my rocks should have bacteria to handle the two clowns. What are your opinions.

 

[Jekyl]

So I’m upgrading my 14 gallon cube to a 120 gallon. I have about 120 pounds of sand, mix of dry and bagged live sand, roughly 60/40% dry to live. And maybe 20-30 lbs dry rock. I’ve started the cycle and ammonia has gone from 2ppm to 0-.25 over the course of a week and a half. Question is. Once I’m confident it’s 0 will I be safe to transfer my tank. I figure the bio load will be much lower because of water volume and my rocks should have bacteria to handle the two clowns. What are your opinions.

If transferring the live rock you already have there is no need to worry about a cycle. Your current rock will already handle your current bioload

 

[brandon429]

agreed. if he's leaving out live rock and did a typical bottle bac cycle that bioload will skip cycle just the same. this is no cycle concern. there's never a benefit to moving unrinsed sand between tanks, it's not a special 'seed' the new tank benefits from. installing only perfectly cloudless verified fully rinsed sand is safe for tank transfers. I've collected a few instances where stirring up sand around fish killed the fish, the clouding in the sand contains X component nobody knows that can kill fish

it's not ammonia. we don't know what the component is, but it follows the cloud of waste from unrinsed sand. if you want the safest mode, do not transfer any degree of unrinsed sand between tanks, it's never safer or better that way.

 

[FDchase]

There is maybe 10 lbs of sand in the old tank. I was going to sift through to make sure there are no snails or anything I want to save hiding in there, like my hitchhiking feather duster, rinse and throw in the sump. For roughly 20 lbs total down there in case I want to grow some macro algae or something. Only thing transferring over would be all live stock, my 3 rocks, light and power head.

 

[Jekyl]

There is maybe 10 lbs of sand in the old tank. I was going to sift through to make sure there are no snails or anything I want to save hiding in there, like my hitchhiking feather duster, rinse and throw in the sump. For roughly 20 lbs total down there in case I want to grow some macro algae or something. Only thing transferring over would be all live stock, my 3 rocks, light and power head.

No real need to transfer the sand at all unless you want to. The rocks will take care of ammonia conversion.

 

[FDchase]

More of a, I have it and I can throw it away or rinse it out and use it. And my emerald crab is on the border of moving out, she isn’t bothering my stylo, first and biggest sps, but she spends hours sitting inside of it.