Help me prepare for the upgrade

[Jasontkd]

hey all, I have a 40 breeder (custom drilled) ordered and on the way in a couple weeks. I will be moving the contents of my 29 gallon SPS dominant reef to the 40 to give it more room to grow out.

However, I have never move this amount of SPS to a tank that will be sitting in the same spot as my current tank. what is the best way to move it. i would like to leave the corals in place on the rock if possible (i will be breaking away a lot of encrustation to remove them). I want to do the move over the coarse of a weekend, but don't really know what all to do.

I assume I will drain the tank and place rock and corals in a rubbermaid tub. I would like to use all the tank water if possible. I will then replace the tank and sand bed in with the 40.

How do I accomidate for all the water? Do I make all fresh and match the params? I don't want to cause any undue stress. Can i keep the water from my water changes over the next few weeks? If so, what is the best way to do that and keep it?

Any help and guidence would be great.

Thanks in advance,
Jason

[tims]

Jason,
yes saving the Good tank water will be best. but making new and having it the same paramters will also do.
as long as you can give them flow and lighting like they are use to then they shoudl be good to go.
if you are replacing all the substrate with new that might be a bit of a problem. mixing old and new should work fine, unless the old is really bad

[Jasontkd]

I will be mixing new with the old. The old is fine. I syphon it regularly. I am also going to rinse the heck out of the new sand to get as much of the junk out of it as possible as well as to keep it from clouding up.

Flow will be from 2 6025s and an eheim 1262 run through an OM squirt 4 way.

can I keep the water from my water changes between now and then? If I do that, how is the best way to keep it?

[Jnicho]

When I upgraded not long ago I was able to keep my LR and corals in my sump and just setup a holding tank for the fish...If you can't do something like that, then I would get a couple of rubbermaid tubs or a plastic trash can to hold you WC water. Drop in a powerhead and a heater and cover it to limit evap and you can save it that way for a while. I have an extra MJ1200 and a heater you can borrow if you want to come over to the east side of town (Independence) and get them. Heck I have a ~35G trash can that has only been used for SW if you need/want to borrow it too.