New Aquarium Water Transfer

fishmike888 · #1 04/02/2006, 03:28 PM

Planning on buying a 75 gallon acryllic tank. Currently own a 55 gallon glass tank. My question is, how much of the water from the current aquarium should I transfer into the new one? I have 45 pounds of live rock and 30 pounds of sediments (live sand/crushed coral), and 2 fish, a trigger fish and a blue tang. The current tank has a small ammonia problem with a read of about .5 and a nitrae reading of 40 ppm. Please let me know.

bertoni · #2 04/02/2006, 03:37 PM

Tough question. I guess I'd transfer all of the water. Are you sure the ammonia is 0.5ppm? That's high for an established tank.

BadOleRoss · #3 04/02/2006, 03:41 PM

I would transfer all of the water and LR and about a scoope of the LS to seed the new substrate.

fishmike888 · #4 04/02/2006, 03:49 PM

Yeah the ammonia is somewhere between .25 and .5 ppm, to me it looks more like .5, I tried doing water changes and bought some of that ammo lock stuff but I dont even think that works.

fishmike888 · #5 04/02/2006, 03:52 PM

btw, ross wat did u mean seed the new substrate? i wasn't planning on buying more sand, at least not right now, just transfering the one from this tank.

teena · #6 04/02/2006, 04:12 PM

im doing the same thing right now 55g to a 75g the guy is upgrading for me tomorrow, today i bought 40lb of dry sand $33 & 20lb of live sand $25 he said he didnt want to use my old sand once you dig around on it it must take things out of it, i thought i read you could rince it with warm ro someone correct me if im wrong, mabey he not wanting to mess with all that, it would of saved me $65 if i could.

BadOleRoss · #7 04/02/2006, 04:36 PM

It is my understanding that transferring the old sand in to the new tank will create problems unless you thoughly clean it. I guess it would be like getting it your tank and disturbing your enite sand bed which is never a good thing.

fishmike888 · #8 04/02/2006, 05:00 PM

ok then i guess i'll have to waste another 50 60 dollars on sand, but im still wondering how much of the water should i transfer considerting the levels of ammonia and nitrate. Will the level lower to below detectable if enough new water is blended in wit the old? also, i know how the nitrate goes up due to overcrowding in a tank/ not enough filtration. I have a remora c pro skimmer right now but i'm planning on upgrading to a deltec MCE600, do you guys think it will eliminate the nitrate?

bertoni · #9 04/02/2006, 05:23 PM

If the tank isn't very old and the sand isn't causing problems, it can be reused. That's what I do.

I would use all of the water, and then, once the animals are acclimated, start some water changes. Personally, I wouldn't add any more stress to the tank change process.

The skimmer might help a lot, and in the mean-time some Amquel Plus should detoxify the ammonia. Ammo Lock might do the same job. Note that most ammonia test kits will still detect the ammonia even if it's bound up by Amquel Plus. If you want a test kit that won't show the bound ammonia, the chemistry forum has some threads on this topic.

fishmike888 · #10 04/02/2006, 05:29 PM

i heard those ammonia chemicals only neutrilize it, not eliminate, so you would have to constantly add them to keep the ammonia in check. About the sand, I set up the tank in september so its not that old and the sand never caused any problems that i could determine were coming from it.

fishmike888 · #11 04/02/2006, 05:31 PM

is there anything else that should be done to the sand b4 adding into the new tank or just directly transfer it?

bertoni · #12 04/02/2006, 06:03 PM

I would just transfer it. If there's more than 2" or so, I'd keep the top 2" of sand separate and put it back on top. The density of animals seems to be highest in that region.