Rescaping a 2-Year Old Reef Tank

[falcooo]

I’m looking for any advise or tips...

 

I’ll be moving my 2-year old 10 gallon Nuvo in the next couple weeks. Inhabitants are lots of different corals, one clown fish, and various inverts. And I’m only moving about 20 minutes down the road. I also figured now is the perfect opportunity to rescape the rock work. So my plan is to break up the main rock and separate/frag the corals. I’ll put all of the livestock into tupperware containers and then into a large cooler for temperature control. Drain & save 90% of the water, slide the tank onto a 12x15 piece of wood and then move to it’s new home. Once there, I’ll be rearranging all of the same rocks into a different design and placing corals. I’ll reuse as much water as I have left, and likely a few gallons of fresh salt water.

 

Is there anything I should worry about? Ie, causing a mini-cycle, or any other potential issues.

 

Thanks in advance!

[mitten_reef]

Once you saved most of the water, thoroughly wash your sand with fresh saltwater, or discard old sand altogether.  You’d be surprised how much nastiness will be left in there. 
Make a lot more salt water than you think you’ll need, like twice-3 times more. As when you’re re-shaping and breaking your rock, you want to rinse off all the debris and dust with saltwater (doesn’t matter if it’s fresh mixed or the saved one). Or even have a 2-3 gallon bucket dedicated as “dunk” tank to remove debris. 
some extra heat and circulation, only as necessary for the critical buckets. In case the re-scape takes extra time. 
The plan looks pretty solid. I would not expect any mini cycle if your rock and other things are matured and you take care to not let any die-off happened during your move & re-scape effort. 

[falcooo]

Thanks! Good ideas on the extra water and dunk tank.

 

With the sand however, why would I want to wash or discard any of it? I was thinking to leave it as unbothered as possible. As to not kick up extra dirt, and also because I figured the majority of the beneficial bacteria resided there.

[mitten_reef]

15 minutes ago, falcooo said:

Thanks! Good ideas on the extra water and dunk tank.

 

With the sand however, why would I want to wash or discard any of it? I was thinking to leave it as unbothered as possible. As to not kick up extra dirt, and also because I figured the majority of the beneficial bacteria resided there.

Mostly because it’s been trapping waste for the better part of the last two year. even if you vacuumed or stirred often that whole time, there are areas that never gets cleaned. You can make your own judgment tho when the time comes, whether it is dirty or clean. Once most of the water is out of the tank it’s be pretty easy to see it. I guess just take my comment above mostly as precaution on the sand as it certainly is one thing you need to be mindful of. 

PS you’ll end up disturbing the sand bed when you re-placing all your base rocks, shuffling and rotating them to get it just right. So not disturbing it is unlikely. 
 

[Clown79]

Definitely either wash old sand or use new. Most spikes and massive nutrient blooms with upgrades/transfers/move is from old sand.

 

The only spike I ever encountered was when I reaquascaped, that's because of the sand getting disturbed. 

 

Biological filtration is in your rocks.

 

[falcooo]

Thanks for the input everyone. Looks like I’ll be washing the sand! I’m glad I posted this because I was really planning to not even touch the sand. 

[Clown79]

59 minutes ago, falcooo said:

Thanks for the input everyone. Looks like I’ll be washing the sand! I’m glad I posted this because I was really planning to not even touch the sand. 

It's hard not disturbing the sand while removing rocks and then aquascaping, the amount of stuff released is really gross and can be problematic.