bored outta my mind here in physics class and thought of a question for everyone...

once i mix up new saltwater and fill my 55 with it, whats the soonest i can put my fish in it from my 10 gal? im not putting in any new LR, just wat was in my 10 fro now. and i was thinking of putting in some of the water from my 10 to hopefully speen up the nitrogen cycle and get some good bacteria in there. any suggestions? btw. most of my LR in my 10 is homamade and has little to no life on it yet that would die off .

Are you putting a sandbed in the 55? Is there sand in the 10? Are you going to use a canister filter on the 55?

Whatever life is on the LR in the 10 isn't going to die just be transfered to another tank.

If you use a cup or so of the sand from the 10 and the canister from the 10 as well as all the rock, you should be able to put the fish in the 55 from the 10 right away. You will lose some of the Bio filtration due to not have all the sand from the 10 but not enough to worry about. You should use all the water from the 10 as well.

What kind of fish and how many?

Just don't add any new fish, other than what has been in the 10g for at least 3-4 weeks.

Uh, if he waits six weeks before putting any fish in the 55, the bacteria colonies will die, unless another source of ammonia is added. Might as well use the fish from the 10g to keep the bacteria that already exists going.

New water isn't going to hurt the fish or affect the existing bacteria colonies.

If your worried about it though, put about a teaspoon of pure ammonia in the 55g or enough to get the ammonia level up to.5ppm and let it go through a small cycle for a few weeks before putting the fish in it.

I have never used a UGF so I can't say from experience. I don't know a single person that uses one on a Salt system. Sandbed and 1-2lbs per gallon of rock is all the biological filtration needed.

I'd set up the 55G, get all the sand and LR out of the 10G and put it to the 55G set up. Leave 5G in the old tank with the fish, and add 2-3 G new water to it( like a water change). So that way you introduce estd. bacteria to the new set up+ you wouldn't put your fish under stress. After that you can start to monitoring your new set up. I'd put a few hardy hermits in there, and start to feed them.If ammonia wont rise in 1-2 weeks, but nitrate shows up you're good to go, so as your fish.

never heard of that shigara, do you have any links to this ammonia thing? anthony calfo has some good readings on all methods of reef keeping. i personaly like a deep bed of sand and a huge skimmer and tons of good rock.