How to upgrade a reef tank.
Reef tank 7 years ago 4,568 views
I went from 100 gallons to 160 gallons. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Always be clear why you want to upgrade your tank. If your corals are not growing, or your tank is full of algae, then an upgrade is not always the answer. My 100g tank was second hand when I brought it 3.5 years ago, and had a few scratches on the glass. My scape was 2 dimensional, and I wanted a more 3 dimensional scape, with more ledges to put corals at different heights, and more room on the sand bed for corals. I also wanted a more random flow, and not just flow down the front, and back of the glass, as I had in my 100g. Every upgrade is different. This is how I did it. Different equipment, tank size, and live stock, will make every upgrade different. If your new tank is going in a different place to the old one, it will make things a lot easier. By using the same water through out the move, you prevent the tank going into a cycle. This is where something dies ( a coral, or sponge on a rock), and rots down into ammonia, nitrite, then nitrate. You will always get a tiny cycle when you upgrade a reef tank, keeping the cycle as small as possible, should mean like me, you don't lose a single piece of live stock. When you have added all the live stock and old water to the new tank, you can then start to add fresh salt water to the new tank slowly, over 1-2 days. This will acclimatize every thing at the same time. You will need multipul heaters to keep every thing warm. Even the live rock!!!. The more water you can make in advance the better, but if you can't make enough to fill the whole, tank, then it does not matter. As long as you have a heater and power head in the new tank, and every thing under water, you can make new salt water, when your storage containers are free.
The final looks pretty nice. Well done