Tank upgrade cycling?

[Kevinkmk]

hi,

I am planning to upgrade my current 20 gallon reef tank that has been running for 10 months to a 74 gallon reefer 350 tank. I will be using the existing 16 lbs of live rock plus some new live rocks, and new sand bed for the new tank. Wondering do I need to cycle my new tank or I can do a instant upgrade? Thanks

 

[Scott Rodriguez]

Wait for a cycle, when setting a nee tank, parameters go crazy, during the days and filtration they will come back to normal

 

[Arthur Jen]

Everytime you set up a new tank, wait for some time until parameters come back to normal, cycle is necesary and patient the key to this. Alkalinity is the first one in go crazy.

 

[Kevinkmk]

Wait for a cycle, when setting a nee tank, parameters go crazy, during the days and filtration they will come back to normal

Everytime you set up a new tank, wait for some time until parameters come back to normal, cycle is necesary and patient the key to this. Alkalinity is the first one in go crazy.

I’m planning to match the new water parameter with my current tank. So the parameter will go crazy even if I match them initially?

 

[Ludders]

+1 on previous advice.

Even if you have an estabished reef, you can kick start off a cycle process or spike if you introduce too much change in one go.

 

[needbiggertanks]

I agree with the above also. Upgraded when i moved in June, i had an obvious cycle.

 

[Kevinkmk]

So I should treat it as a new tank and cycle it ?

 

[Ludders]

Yeah, go steady

 

[SpradleBags]

I just recently upgraded my tank as well... went from 60lbs of live rock to 90 lbs... i let the new 30 lbs of rock sit in a tub with a skimmer and pump turning the water for about a month... had no issue and no casualties. Good luck!!

 

[brandon429]

I have an eight page documentation on how to not cycle that if you want. About fifteen tanks are covered as skip cycle examples

The main thing you need to do for it to work is procure skip cycle rock from your pet store, aka any rock covered in coralline. We can skip cycle any tank guaranteed if the order of ops is planned out first

 

[Kevinkmk]

I have an eight page documentation on how to not cycle that if you want. About fifteen tanks are covered as skip cycle examples

The main thing you need to do for it to work is procure skip cycle rock from your pet store, aka any rock covered in coralline. We can skip cycle any tank guaranteed if the order of ops is planned out first

Great! If you can send me the info for reference that would be great! Thank you

 

[brandon429]

please by all means take pics we'll add ya.

highlights cuz lots of pages is headache (we want a place to compile before n afters, consider the leaps they've taken first):

you have the interesting task of stepping up dilution, vs stepping down, for the same bioload you already have. nobody says you have to rush extra fish here, they should be QT/the new system put through fallow after adding the extra LFS rocks anyway. Not that you'd need nitrification ramp up time if you used pristinely new live rock all purple, but as a safety hedge your main two events are to transfer no detritus at all, only clean rocks and use your new sand, and when you bring rocks home from the pet store that are guaranteed already cycled just haul em home in wet 5 gallon buckets of sw so worms inside wont die. wait before adding new bioload to the tank in the form of fish in my opinion

transferring over detritus and sandbed waste is your locus of cycle, its pinpointed, we know what to anticipate now

check your current rocks to see if they are full of detritus if applicable (rare but we get it from time to time) by setting one or two into a clean bucket of water with circulation, swirl em around in the bucket a bit and see if that test bucket clouds any. if it does, then we need to simply rinse them out nicely with a creative saltwater jet to dislodge it

not transferring detritus is all you have to do as we show here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-official-sand-rinse-thread-aka-one-against-many.230281/

*its fully true in the past that moving tanks and working them was a source of cycles for some, and not for others. true. all we did here is make the posit that detritus was causing it all, not weak bacteria, then we tested the heck out of it.

I treat my 12 yr old pico reef meaner than anyone does their reef on this whole board before writing such stuff. I leave the whole reef drained in the air for half an hour, hundreds of times, just to condition it to the harshness.

sand bed tap water rinses too, not that I need them, its to show the incidental nature of sandbeds and their bacteria. your rocks have what matters.

 

[brandon429]

this is the actual skip cycle rock I started my last reef with. I brought home ten frags, and the rock, and a couple snails/ceriths

checked them for detritus, good to go (detritus rule holds for pet store>home just the same, xfer no detritus, anticipate it)

I didn't even bring mine home in water bc I Know they'll be fine. The reason I don't recommend that online is because everyone is using API ammonia which will false read anyway, so if the rocks were out of water I cannot get them to disbelieve the false .25 it shows.

skip cycle rock:

could be skip cycle rock below, not sure, so an accurate ammonia digestion test would need to be ran on this set below. On the set above, coralline tells all we need to know about the cycle status (was done a hundred years ago not sure, that's real ocean rock could be a thou lol)

 

[Kevinkmk]

this is the actual skip cycle rock I started my last reef with. I brought home ten frags, and the rock, and a couple snails/ceriths

checked them for detritus, good to go (detritus rule holds for pet store>home just the same, xfer no detritus, anticipate it)

I didn't even bring mine home in water bc I Know they'll be fine. The reason I don't recommend that online is because everyone is using API ammonia which will false read anyway, so if the rocks were out of water I cannot get them to disbelieve the false .25 it shows.

skip cycle rock:
View attachment 628471


could be skip cycle rock below, not sure, so an accurate ammonia digestion test would need to be ran on this set below. On the set above, coralline tells all we need to know about the cycle status (was done a hundred years ago not sure, that's real ocean rock could be a thou lol)

View attachment 628472

Thank you for the great info!