Whew! Just broke down my 55g and moved everybody to the 110

[JAG107]

Man what a way to kill an afternoon!
First, I started acclimating the mushrooms and 2 angels, dwarf lion to the 110's water. Then the fun began-- moving all the live rock and sand over and re-aquascaping the 110, meaning removal of all the SPS, LPS and nems, then making a big mess dumping in the old sand. Also, I took the clown trigger to the LFS for some store credit (he sells this size for $80, I'll see what I get for it in a couple days). Then, I moved the ribbon eel, which was a lot easier than I thought it would be!
The biggest change to the 110 is switching from a wet/dry filtration to a 10 gal fuge w/ chaeto and caulerpa, DSB. Kept the old skimmer and moved the other one from the old tank so now I'm rockin' dual skimmers. Also the sand bed is now 6-7", up from 4", so hopefully that will help my parameters a bit, and provide a little more food for the scooter blenny and 2 dragonets. I'll post some pics tomorrow once the water clears up from the sand dump. Now, it's Miller time for me!:Cheers:

 

[dustin_P74]

if thats too much sand in your DT you could drop it down to the fuge for a lot more breeding ground for the pods

 

[yote]

Its always fun to swap tanks.Even when its a forced issue.
Hope everything handles the change alright.

 

[SSalty]

I am not looking forward to moving my tank.

 

[JAG107]

actually the fuge has way more sand than it needs, which is cool, I'm hoping it will help out with nutrient export. All the fish seem to be happy, now that the dust has settled. Nitrates have been around 15-20 until now, so I'm hoping the fuge and extra skimmer will help drop that a bit.

 

[dustin_P74]

oh yeah, they should take care of that problem

 

[Bifferwine]

Congrats on a job well done. Even though I'm sorry you had to do it :(

 

[Altohombre]

a bigger tank sounds like a good thing to me =)

 

[daugherty]

good job on getting it done i have had to do it also it is not fun trying to get everything going in a short amount of time.

 

[JAG107]

OK here's some pics that I promised to put up:

I could only get the tail of the eel in this shot:

Here's the fuge:

 

[yote]

Looks like everything went smooth.
Thats a healthy looking copperband too.

 

[JAG107]

Thanks, Yote! He's been doing great, had him going on 5 months now. Eats like a pig, too, he'll eat right out of my fingers. The Koran has also doubled in size since March, almost as big as the butterfly now. My water test this morning revealed 0 phos, 0 ammonia, 0 trites, 20 trates, 400 calc, 7.8 pH and 8 degrees dkh. Had a salinity drop from all the frenzied water changes yesterday, it fell from 1.024 to 1.0225, so over the course of this morning I got it back up to 1.0235 very slowly, I want to get it back up to 1.026 eventually, over the next couple weeks.

 

[yote]

Just on your next water change,mix it to a salinity of 1.026 and it'll all work out.

 

[dustin_P74]

tank is looking good, how have you kept that CBB alive for so long

 

[JAG107]

I was a little worried at first about the CBB, he came from the store with a wicked case of ich, was getting beated up by the yellow tang and koran angel, but now it's 5 months or so later, he's always out, checking out the LR for pods, he loves mysis and raw clams and mussels especially. Also he'll pick at raw shrimp when I drop it in for the BTA's. I hope he continues to thrive, I hear 6 months is a weird tank age for them, like a lot of them die right around there. Also I've been able to keep my psych. mandarin, spotted mandarin and scooter blenny happy with mysids and whatever pods they find. Hopefully now with over 200lbs of rock and 6" of sand plus a refugium there should
be plenty of pods to go around.

 

[dustin_P74]

i dont think having enough pods will be a problem for you

 

[yote]

I think copperbands are a lot like mandrines.Then need live pods and aiptasias.Give them that and they tend to do great.

 

[JAG107]

Well the Aiptasia supply was no problem for the CBB... now anytime I throw in a rock with a couple on there, he's all over it like flies on horses!