Disaster strikes while switching tanks!
Here was the plan:
my tank was 75 gallons, and the new tank is 180 (100 on one side and 80 on the other). I figured I could move my whole tank (water, sand, rock, livestock) to the smaller side with all my equipment hooked to just that side while I cycled the larger side independantly for a while. After that, I could slowly start mixing the two sides and then initiate the loop. I stuck all my livestock, rock, and water in large bins with powerheads and lights while I moved the old tank aside and the new one in, then transfered the sand and remainder of the rock in the tank and started filling it with livestock rock and water one bin at a time. All went well until an hour after it was filled when the bulkhead started leaking! (must have gotten hit during moving it, or by a large rock when filling it) In an instant, I made the decision to quickly transfer everything over to the larger side which put everything under immediate tremendous stress (nobody likes moving 3 times in 1 day!). Everything is starting to look ok again, and nothing has died, but now I have a bare bottom tank, and need to move the sand into a sump tomorrow so that I can have soom kind of temporary loop to my biological filtration and have use of my skimmer and fuge. I connected it to a canister filter with carbon and a ton of powerheads for overnight.
