We only had the tank up for a year, but we weren't willing to risk it with our livestock
That's about how long our 75G has been up and running, and I knew the sand s/b rinsed...I had found that thread on Reef Central for Clif and posted it, but I failed to relay that info to my hubby. :lol:
The only thing that they (RC) didn't mention, was about all the worms, etc. living in the sand. I would want to try and save these creatures, as I'm sure the FW rinsing will kill them. I would try to use water from the old tank, but we will need to use that for holding corals and the like during the transition. What my major worry will be, as Chris mentioned, that the new tank will be placed where the 75G currently sits. This is driving me nuts trying to figure out how to do this without losing any livestock! Where to put the fish? Well, we have a QT tank we could use (rather small...about 20G, and a 45G DAS that we never set up, so we could feasibly split the fish/inverts between the two, however, we would probably need to use the old water from the existing tank for that too, right? Wouldn't 100% freshly mixed (by freshly mixed, I mean circulating for at least a week or more in the mixing barrel) be detrimental to the fish? The thought of this move is both exciting and stressful to me already!!

Also, I was wondering if maybe I used a strainer of some sort on the live sand, if that would enable me to get most of the creatures out (worms, etc.)? I really didn't want to lose them. We will also obviously have to be very careful with the LR too. I will not want to rinse any of the LR, as there is not only corals growing on them, but *many* creatures...we seem to have a LOT of critters on the LR considering it is only roughly a year old. We will probably use what we have and buy more LR as we can afford...a little at a time.

I was thinking we should use roughly half of the live sand from our old tank, and the rest would be new...since we will be doubling the tank size, I knew we would need a *lot* more sand.

Wendy