Mini cycle switching from 55g to 20g?

[DTher85]

I have done some searching and have found topics about transferring stock to a bigger tank but what about to a smaller tank?

 

I saved all my cured live rock from my old tank and it is sitting in buckets and some is in a 10 gallon hospital tank with my livestock.

 

I have my 20 gallon shallow tank set up (JBJ RL-20) 25+ gallons of water mixed and ready to go and also bought 20 lbs of CaribSea live reef sand.

 

My question is, can I just lay the sand down, fill up the tank with the new pre-mixed water and transfer the fish + inverts over or should I wait out a possible mini cycle? I figured with the live rock already cured I shoulld be good to go and that should prevent any ammonia spike.

 

Anyone with experience have any advice on this process?

 

I should note the water in my 10g hospital tank is from the old 55g setup, should I use some or all of that with the new water since some of the bacteria is in the water column?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

[Kevin69]

I just did the same thing... from a 72 to a 29.... no choice it cracked. it is cycling but not a huge cycle. I had brown algae for a few days now I have little green algae hair balls on the sand. but all's going well

[brandon429]

ammonia is the real question, the algae can be incidental to a move or non move

 

I predict zero cycle, you are doing what we term in the thread above to be a soft cycle, if you can't pull it off, then all that yapping for years was for nothing

 

the variables are: how long have they been sitting in buckets. if you had both tanks up, and the new one just had sand and water new, you could easily lift out the rocks from the old and set in the new then move what you think to be a reasonable fish bioload over to the new tank with no cycle, unless you use api to test for ammonia then it'd def say there was a minicycle.

 

if some organisms are dying due to being in buckets, thats an atypical time factor not a soft cycling factor just a heads up. I still think it can be done, test and post back with non api test kit pls~