Kngfisher's 150H upgrade

[kngfisher]

This tread attempts to explain how I upgraded from an existing 90gal (Glasscages acrylic) tank that had been running for three years to a 150gal (Marineland corner-flo glass) tank.

 

Things you will need ahead of time

1) gather as many containers for water as possible. I used 4 30gal trash cans and a 20gal solid pond liner to hold my rock,fish, and coral

 

2) grab some small pumps for each of the containers. once the containers are full of water be it from the tank for fresh mixed, its a good idea to keep the water moving in order to keep the o2 level as high as possible

 

3) grab some heaters for the containers that will hold the water from the tank and the fresh mixed. When you are taking the old tank down and putting everything back into the new tank it is a good idea to have all the water temp match. Less stress on the coral and fish.

 

4)Plenty of fresh salt water pre-mixed. I was going from a 90 to a 150 so I had about 100gal of fresh pre-mixed salt water on-hand and 20 gal of fresh unsalted water.

 

5) plenty of vinegar. It is a good idea to take this opportunity to clean you pumps, power-heads, probes, etc while you are upgrading. Also a good idea to check to make sure everything is working as it is supposed to like float-valves and that wavysea that always stops rotating

 

6) misc plumbing parts like extra hose clamps and flexible tubing. I needed to build two 1.5" dursos and have 8 feet of flexible 1" PVC for the return pump.

 

7) a friend or two. It always helps to have an extra set of hands and eyes. In my case with a tall tank (30" tall) and a tall stand (36" tall) it really helped that my neighbor was tall. We also needed a ladder.

 

8) time. setting up a tank is not a quick process neither is upgrading. Make sure you have the time and a patience of the others living in the house while this is going on. I did this upgrade in the middle of a snow storm. It snowed 20" the weekend of this upgrade. Glad we did not loose power in the middle of this ordeal.

 

9) plastic drop cloth. You are dealing with potentially lots of water and with that is the potential for lots of drips, drops, and basically a big mess can happen quickly. It's going to be a mess upgrading the tank so it's better to protect the carpet, floor, any furniture in the area that can or might get wet in the process.

Edited February 17, 2010 by kngfisher

[zoozilla]

Jumping on board.

[kngfisher]

First thing that was done was I covered the new 150H with a self adhesive black background. I do not like looking threw the tank at the misc wires and plumbing. It really distracts from the show of fish, coral, rock, inverts, etc.

 

Next I shut off the return pump from the 90gal tank. I left a pump running in the display and a heater as to not stress out the livestock until I had to. I am trying to just make it as close to a big water change as possible for them.

 

Next, I unplugged my co2 tank, the skimmer, the UV unit, the auto top-off pump, my kalk reactor and lights. Next I pumped all the water out of the sump into a pond liner that I borrowed from a flowerseller friend of mind :-). After the sump was emptied, I was able to slide the sump out of the stand and remove the skimmer and return pump and transfer them to their vinegar bath where I let them soak. I also placed vinegar into the kalk reactor and then used that to hold my tunze pumps and AC3 probes. I started with 4+ gal of vinegar. Before this, I had not been very good at soaking my pumps and probes so I just let them soak as long as possible. I used a 4:1 vinegar to water mix for everything and that seemed to work well. That and a tooth brush for the stubborn parts that the vinegar could not just eat off.

 

With the electronics removed, the sump out of the way, and the plumbing disconnected it is now time to start the real work. Start by lowering the water level in the tank until the rock work can be started to the broken down. You want to get the rock and coral out before you try and catch the fish. Less places for the fish to hide the easier it will be to catch them. Do not disturb the sand yet if possible. I drained the tank water into two 30gal trash cans, a 15 gal pond liner, and the sump I removed and cleaned. I saved all the existing tank water this way. I put all the existing rock and coral into the pond liner. As most of my rock was out, I caught all my 7 fish and placed them in the pond liner too. Once all the livestock was in pond liner I removed the rest of the rock. Another reason why it is a good idea to weight is that by disturbing the sand you could potentially release a large ammonia or other toxic substance into a very small body of water stressing the livestock and potentially causing issues. This tank move is stressful enough on your livestock.