Quote:
Originally Posted by SharkBait48
Are there any tips on preventing a big die off or not really during transfer?
Are there any good stickies on water parameters?
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There are some other factors to consider like, how far is the transfer? Ie, from the 120g established tank to the new tank? How long is it going to take you to take the rock out of the old tank and into the new tank?
Essentially what you'll want to do is minimize the amount of time the rock is out of the water. If the rock is to sit in holding containers as you perform the tasks at either end (from the 120g and into the 75g) then you may want to heat the rocks and possibly curculate the water. Are you going to be sturring up a lot of old settle sand from the old tank? If so, you could be kicking up a lot of gunk that will be harmful to both tanks! Care should be taken not to stir up too much old sand. Also for this reason I would recommend a partial water change in the new tank. That is, instead of dumping in all 75g worth of water from the old tank, I would only use maybe 50% of the establish tank's water and 50% new water. This in effect is like doing a 50% water change. There isn't actually that much beneficial bacteria in the water column anyway. Mostly all of it will be on the rocks.
If too much die off from the rocks occur this is where you can get into trouble if you try to add new fish too soon. You can easily kick the bacteria out of balance and cause a crash killing everything. Again, this is why I would recommend monitoring your transfer for a few days afterwards first, especially if the whole process has taken a while to complete.
If on the other hand the old tank happens to be sitting next to the new tank the amount of time that the rocks are out of the water is probably so short that there will be little die off. But you did say you were getting the rocks from a friend so I'm not sure how far your friend lives.