What am I doing wrong?

[Europhyllia]

Oh I didn't catch that either!
Remember when I picked up the seahorses I wanted the rocks and the algae and the filters in the hang on filter and i even hauled away the tank water (lol) but I left the old substrate behind. When you disturb the substrate it would cause more trouble than benefit so I used dry sand in their set up to avoid any cycle there.

I was looking for a good graphic to explain why Nitrites would (should) go up after you detect ammonia and found this one on the LiveAquaria site:

here's the complete link: http://www.liveaquaria.com/pic/article.cfm?aid=78

[ZeroHour]

sweet I finally contributed something...1 for 100 n sumthin.

[funkyseamonkey]

I took about 35 gallons of water from each 45 and then I only took the sand from one tank because it had lots of pods in it. I didnt take the sand from the other tank. I set up the 125 with 70 gallons of old water and the rest was new cycled salt water. I put fresh washed crushed coral as the substrate in the 125 and then mixed the sand in too so that the pods were still there.