New to this site from CR

Hey everyone, Im preetty new to this site, been keeping an eye on it for a few weeks.  seems to be very informative and lots of helpful people. If only i had more time to keep track of my forums. I live in cedar rapids, been keeping saltwater aquariums for close to 6 years in my spare time. Had a handful of mixed reef type tanks. kinda let my tanks go with very little attention the last year or so, been busy with a new house and stuff, but getting back into it again.amazingly enough did not lose any live stock in that time. 
The last 2.5 years ive had a 55 gal and 75gal aquariums setup and i spent the last few months preparing for a transfer into one 125 gal aquarium. made the transfer about 4 weeks ago so now i have a 125. ill post another on the whole transfermation of this tank, the UPS and the downs!! cant wait to here from everyone, hopefully ill get help and hopefully be able to help others to.
Dave

 

So i aquired a 125gal with a black stand and canopy and decided to sand them down and stain them to match the wood floors in my house.
 
 
so i took my time planning and building my plumbing and purchased a mag 18 for return. my fiance of course through this six month process has been ready to get down to one tank and free up the dining room and only have one tank. about 2 months ago she marked a daay on the calender for me to tranfer over, ready or not. and you all know how that goes.
so tank transfer day comes all should go smooth i would assume with all the planning ive done. right? right! but no it can never be that right.  to be continued

 

well the morning of the move i well made a big mistake. being half asleep and lazy i accidently cracked the 55 gal tank i had spent so much time on by bumping it just right with the return pump i was putting in there. thats no good! somehow my walls were able to live.... i was angry and needed something to take the anger out on so i practiced restraint. tough but i just let it go.... worse things could have happened.
 
guess thats where they coined the term _ _ _ T HAPPENS!

 

So since my lady had put the date on the calender 2 months before and was still expecting to have her dining room back i had to go along with the tranformation. problem is all the work i had put into the planning and plumbing of this 125 was calculated with having a 55 gal sump that no longer holds water. so not enough time to get the sump going i decide have plenty of hang on filters and canisters to set it up still and i will construct my sump and slide it in once i get it REbuilt. so here we go long process ahead hear's how the room started the day
  

 

Starting with the present 55 gal left side on the pictures I removed most of the water into a few rubber maid containers and a few 5 gallong buckets, once i had about half the water out i split the fish up in a couple of the 5 gallon buckets and then continued to siphon as much water as i could into rubbermaids.

once i had most of the water out i began to remove the LR and put in the rubbermaids as well after rinsing quickly as to get all the sand off so it would not cloud up the water in the rubbermaids

after the LR was out i proceeded to scoop the sand out of the bottom with a new dust pan. i would scoop hold it on the side let all the water drain and then carry over to the 125. this took some time, but i wanted to take as little of this leftover water as i could to the new tank i figured this is the water that all the junk and built of nitrates etc will be so i just wanted the sand!

now its on to the present 75 gallon to be transferred. off come the lights and the top.
 
i went through the same process, draining most of the water. catching the fish. 5 gallon buckets. rubbermaids for most of the water. then putting the LR in the rubbermaids

after that i did the same process on the sand. but when i had the sand transferred from the 55 and 75 over to the 125 i was not happy with the amount and decided i needed more. so i went to pets playhouse and bout 2 20lbs bags of live sand and 2 30lbs bags of dry arragonite to add to it.

so once the sand was in i put a long piece of plastic sheeting over the entire bottom on top of the sand. i put 4 dinner plates across on top of the plastic to hold it down and started filling the tank with waater. i rotated about every other 5 gallon bucket i poured in was the old tank water from rubbermaids, and then the pre mixed R/O water i had made in buckets the week before.
 
to my amazement this process with the plastic sheeting and plates worked! not very cloudy at all!once the water was most of the way up i took out the plastic and plates and put the LR in the tank. Thats always a fun process of designing the rock im sure it wont be this way for a long time but i still wanted it to look good to start. then i poured the rest of the water in over the rocks and it still did not get too cloudy!. so i put the filters and heaters on the tank and started them up.
 
i let the filters run for a few hours while i drip acclimated with small hoses from the tank to the small bucketss for the fish. after about 3 1/2 hours i started to put the fish in. this is about 1 in the morning by this poiint so i put the fish in and had to go to bed and hope everything was fine in the morning. to my surprise when i woke up i had a clear tank full of fish swimming around. everyone made it!!!
  
 
This is now about 4 weeks later and everyone is still doing great no casualties, the mushrooms, trees, anenome and fish all survived. and as you can see in the pictures my engineer goby is loving all the sand. the sand was level when i put it in now it has all those hills in the front. any input, advise, questions, or anything else would be awesome! hope you all enjoyed... and i will keep posting

 

Yeah thanks for the input and no problem on the documentation. figured it was a good way to introduce myself since i went through it recently and still have major work ahead. ill need to become a member and hopefully have time to get to some of the meetings and or tours.

Dave