Can I switch my sand bed out and replace it with Aragonite?

[CrazyDuck959]

I was just wondering if it would be possible to switch out my sand bed and replace it with new Aragonite? Every time I do a water change and siphon it clouds up the water in my tank and the sand has been looking extra dirty recently. Would this be a bad idea? Could it kill everything? Is there a specific way I should do this?

It’s a nano tank that’s been running for a couple years now. Has a few Corals and a couple of RFA’s as well as 2 Clownfish

Thanks
- Sam

 

[brandon429]

No it’s easy we have done it five hundred times

Do it all at once, not in sections:

EMERGENCY - Substrate change

Hi all, I’m really confused and need advice. I currently have crushed coral in my flu all evo 13.5g which due to a month in hospital the sand bed got so badly stained I can’t clean it and it looks gross. It’s a mixed tank with a clown, fire fish and 2 cardinals. I’ve ordered caribsea live pink...

www.reef2reef.com

Doing it in sections can kill your tank, doing it all at once with a tank takedown + cleaning is the only safe way

 

[CrazyDuck959]

No it’s easy we have done it five hundred times

Do it all at once, not in sections:

EMERGENCY - Substrate change

Hi all, I’m really confused and need advice. I currently have crushed coral in my flu all evo 13.5g which due to a month in hospital the sand bed got so badly stained I can’t clean it and it looks gross. It’s a mixed tank with a clown, fire fish and 2 cardinals. I’ve ordered caribsea live pink...

www.reef2reef.com

Doing it in sections can kill your tank, doing it all at once with a tank takedown + cleaning is the only safe way

I wanna make sure I am understanding this correctly before I do it. So the beneficial bacteria in the rocks is all that is needed to keep the tank stable? And all I need to do is take the rocks/livestock out and put them in a holding container with water? Once that’s done remove all the sand from the tank and either wash it or replace it? I’m guessing I want to remove my filter media and put it somewhere before I start it as well right? Every grain of the old sand needs to be removed right? If I got anything wrong or I am missing anything please let me know!

Thanks
- Sam

 

[CrazyDuck959]

@brandon429 went ahead and followed the steps, here is a before and after picture, I’ll update in a week or 2 once the results have set in.

 

[i cant think]

@brandon429 went ahead and followed the steps, here is a before and after picture, I’ll update in a week or 2 once the results have set in.

The Aragonite won’t actually change any scenario you had with your regular sand. You’ll still get clouding in the water - Cause by trapped sediment/detritus, I don’t recommend siphoning sand as it removes a food source from your fish and inverts.

And the Cyano will still come back, it’s all caused by parameters. Removing sand won’t prevent it, it’ll just slow the process of Binary Fission.

 

[CrazyDuck959]

The Aragonite won’t actually change any scenario you had with your regular sand. You’ll still get clouding in the water - Cause by trapped sediment/detritus, I don’t recommend siphoning sand as it removes a food source from your fish and inverts.

And the Cyano will still come back, it’s all caused by parameters. Removing sand won’t prevent it, it’ll just slow the process of Binary Fission.

When I first set up the tank I never washed the live sand I got which is why it is cloudy, that’s why I opted to change it for a slightly larger grain (never liked the small grain sand look) that was also washed before being placed in the tank. And I’m not changing it to get rid of the Cyano (it’s kinda my fault for it appearing due to a lack of maintenance for a while) I just really wanted the larger grain size as well as some new clean sand in there as it has become dirty over the years the tank has been running for. But I completely understand what you’re saying I just did it for different reasons.

 

[Roatan Reef]

Step 1 .

Thoroughly clean Sand Bed.

Step 2.

Add Caribsea CoraLine Gravel (it's basically larger crushed coral chunks.

Step 3.

Get a bag of TBS Live Sand (Tampa Bay Saltwater) @LiverockRocks
And mix accordingly. You will have a nice mix of fine, chunky and live sand with all types of good stuff for your tank, and believe me, your tank will love it.

 

[brandon429]

Washing the sand is a powerful way to beat dinos and cyano, great job! After pics look laser clear really good job

Reef tank sand beds hold nothing that we need, it’s all waste which is why changing the sand makes the tank perk up. A few bugs and worms in the sand isn’t a big loss, they just migrate back down from the rocks into the new cleaned sand and it all starts to take on waste again cyclically

So you can either siphon it preventatively or rip clean it like this as needed, it’s always refreshing to clean the sand in every reef tank. They catch and hold waste and that waste feeds invasions over time.

Sandbed rip cleans are a way to get your tank into a very very old age. Not cleaning sand is a way to kill the tank slowly with waste compounding, you just intercepted that event.

 

[brandon429]

@CrazyDuck959 so the big tie in to reefing, beyond just your sandbed swap, is your nano now has an infinite biological lifespan and is immune to all invasions in reefing

(Because you can repeat those wash steps anytime you want I’ve done it over a hundred times on my super old pico)

That’s not an overstatement, rip cleans provide that to any system small enough to run them. A 250 gallon tank owner can’t do what you just did as needed but a nano owner can

If you ever get dinos or cyano again, you can either spend time and money on experiment dosers or you can flip a switch and have your tank cheat reset just like what occurred. When your tank is taken down you can easily just knife scrape off any invader as surgery, then reuse the cleaned rocks.

You can see that sand beds in reef tanks are expendable, and not needed at any time for any tank on the board. That means if they get invaded we can just wash them out, then they’re not invaded.

Knowing there’s a secret trick to reset without actually resetting anything but the invasion gives unlimited biological lifespan to reefing, Boyd’s chemi clean does not. Tanks can be killed doing cyano doser work, try and search out chemi clean killed my reef threads

Then try and find one time, one example, where a rip clean killed someone’s tank. I’ve never seen it happen in ten years work.

There is no invasion in reefing that can beat surgical knifing of rocks, and washing or swap of sand and all new water matching temp and salinity. That covers the gamut of all possible reef invasions, without buying meds and dosers.

For sure some invasions can be so strong you must repeat rip cleans until you figure out how to suppress without them, but that has nothing to do with having a wrecked tank that has to do with prevention and less work.



Anyone who owns a wrecked tank can simply will it into compliance overnight, as often as required until suppression is found- but most don’t know that because they were taught that sandbeds have vital non-replaceable bacteria and can’t be disturbed. That’s not the case at all your tank will show.

Can u post a full tank pic

 

[CrazyDuck959]

@CrazyDuck959 so the big tie in to reefing, beyond just your sandbed swap, is your nano now has an infinite biological lifespan and is immune to all invasions in reefing

(Because you can repeat those wash steps anytime you want I’ve done it over a hundred times on my super old pico)

That’s not an overstatement, rip cleans provide that to any system small enough to run them. A 250 gallon tank owner can’t do what you just did as needed but a nano owner can

If you ever get dinos or cyano again, you can either spend time and money on experiment dosers or you can flip a switch and have your tank cheat reset just like what occurred. When your tank is taken down you can easily just knife scrape off any invader as surgery, then reuse the cleaned rocks.

You can see that sand beds in reef tanks are expendable, and not needed at any time for any tank on the board. That means if they get invaded we can just wash them out, then they’re not invaded.

Knowing there’s a secret trick to reset without actually resetting anything but the invasion gives unlimited biological lifespan to reefing, Boyd’s chemi clean does not. Tanks can be killed doing cyano doser work, try and search out chemi clean killed my reef threads

Then try and find one time, one example, where a rip clean killed someone’s tank. I’ve never seen it happen in ten years work.

There is no invasion in reefing that can beat surgical knifing of rocks, and washing or swap of sand and all new water matching temp and salinity. That covers the gamut of all possible reef invasions, without buying meds and dosers.

For sure some invasions can be so strong you must repeat rip cleans until you figure out how to suppress without them, but that has nothing to do with having a wrecked tank that has to do with prevention and less work.



Anyone who owns a wrecked tank can simply will it into compliance overnight, as often as required until suppression is found- but most don’t know that because they were taught that sandbeds have vital non-replaceable bacteria and can’t be disturbed. That’s not the case at all your tank will show.

Can u post a full tank pic

Yes, worked extremely well and am very happy with the turnout. My tank lights are off at the moment, but when the lights turn back on I’ll go ahead and post a picture of the completed tank. I’ll see if I can find an old picture of the sand. But I will definitely be updating my tank thread on how this method went for me. I think the only thing I regret not doing was making sure I attached all my rocks together with something before I lifted them out of the tank (don’t think I put them in the exact right way), but overall the process didn’t take to long if I had to give somebody else the advice for this I would just say make sure you give yourself a couple hours! Thanks again Brandon!

 

[CrazyDuck959]

@brandon429 spotless substrate!