debbie
Active Member
Yes it was a pain as I was moving freshwater fish down and saltwater fish up in gallon size.
But I did alot of planning to make sure it would go fast and smooth. The biggest pain was the distilled water as I do my own. But do make sure that you are not wanting to upgrade again soon as the move is hard on the fish, inverts etc. If you plan on going bigger at some point I would do it now. When you sit back and look at a 20 gal it really is not as big as you think. My 25 gal is a nice size but when I put my rock and sand in there from the 10 gal I could not believe how it filled it up. So if you want to have a nice tank with an assortment of corals etc I would highly recommend you get at least a 50 gal, you will then have alot more room to work with.
What I did was to have my water ready with the salt too. I cycled this in the tank then I placed my sand and rock in there from the existing tank (fish were not happy) Let this settle a bit and then turned on the filter. I then added the fish inverts and remaining tank water but in the process making sure that my temp and salinity readings were exactly the same as the tank they were in this is important to me. The cloudiness was all gone towards the evening and the next morning all was perfectly clear. I was very concerned about my star and urchin but today they are moving now and doing their thing. So far my tests are great but I am keeping a watchful eye on this as I know they might creep up. The only corals I have are mushrooms and they are open even wider than before and look just great. I need to change my lights yet and add more live rock as I can but I am so happy with the move and was scared for no reason really only just how this move would all go as I did not want to send this tank into a cycle or crash it. But I am not out of the wood work yet as they say.
Good luck and keep us posted....Deb
But I did alot of planning to make sure it would go fast and smooth. The biggest pain was the distilled water as I do my own. But do make sure that you are not wanting to upgrade again soon as the move is hard on the fish, inverts etc. If you plan on going bigger at some point I would do it now. When you sit back and look at a 20 gal it really is not as big as you think. My 25 gal is a nice size but when I put my rock and sand in there from the 10 gal I could not believe how it filled it up. So if you want to have a nice tank with an assortment of corals etc I would highly recommend you get at least a 50 gal, you will then have alot more room to work with.
What I did was to have my water ready with the salt too. I cycled this in the tank then I placed my sand and rock in there from the existing tank (fish were not happy) Let this settle a bit and then turned on the filter. I then added the fish inverts and remaining tank water but in the process making sure that my temp and salinity readings were exactly the same as the tank they were in this is important to me. The cloudiness was all gone towards the evening and the next morning all was perfectly clear. I was very concerned about my star and urchin but today they are moving now and doing their thing. So far my tests are great but I am keeping a watchful eye on this as I know they might creep up. The only corals I have are mushrooms and they are open even wider than before and look just great. I need to change my lights yet and add more live rock as I can but I am so happy with the move and was scared for no reason really only just how this move would all go as I did not want to send this tank into a cycle or crash it. But I am not out of the wood work yet as they say.
Good luck and keep us posted....Deb
) Well I hooked upo a chiller and within days the urchin grew all his spines back and is healthy as ever. Its out and about at night eating my coralline and algae. I was pretty amazed that he survived. Im glad yours survived as well they seem like hardy lil buggers. I too have rock boring urchins but yours seem very different compared to mine. Maybe mine are of a different species?
