Changing my sand out question.

[GibsonGuitars]

Hello, I am realizing that I used crappy black sand from my LFS and need to swap it out. My tanks are already cycled and about 3 mo the old, but this sand was a huge mistake. It had far to much fine grain, some of it floats when disturbed, that same fine grain it gets into and is irritating the corals. Worsts, the black sand which I thought would “look cool” is seriously dampening the light in the tank. I added a second light and it’s still dull and seems portly lit due to the dark bottoms Here is the plan, please advise if I am on the right track or need to change anything.
Pull 5 gals of the existing water to one of three 5 gallon buckets with heaters and a circ pump in each. Pull the first coral covered live rock in, and fish. Repeat with all 15 gallons and 3 live rock. After the Water is out, Remove all the sand, replace with white live sand, larger grains 1mm-2.5mm reef style and then reverse the water and live rock transfers. Will this work? Anything I need to look out for? Thanks in advance fellow reefers!

 

[brandon429]

You must pre rinse the new sand in tap until it runs clear, then RO water, then use. Cloudless start

not the clarifier packet

a tap pre rinse prep.


only the bacteria on your rocks matter, not the old sand. Not the bac from the new sand, only rock bac matter

Keeping the old sand waste isolated from the sensitive animals is the key trick to pulling off a skip cycle.

 

[brandon429]

Put back all new water the old will have clouding. Literally the live rock bac is all you need
Holding the live rock in tank water: swish them rough before moving back on top of new sand, make that the rock rinse water to eject rock clouding



we want cloudless reassembly
not old water bac nor new sand bac.

 

[GibsonGuitars]

Put back all new water the old will have clouding. Literally the live rock bac is all you need

not old water bac nor new sand bac.

Awesome. I always read about water changes being 30% or 50% even when my nitrates were high... so I somehow just assumed changing all the water at once wasn’t a good idea. But that just must be for convenience as under normal circumstances a full water change would be difficult.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed it’s no harm, in fact here’s a really big work thread to show it in practice

this was key to safety against light bleaching: drop your light levels on the new tank like they’re new LEDs. People found in pattern than same level light in new tank minus all organics calls for acclimate par:

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

the key is solid waste nitrate, that which degrades into nitrate, detritus. Most are not willing to let go of it/fears upset or can’t/ tank is too big.

like u said, it’s not practical to deep clean. But to do so is the best removal of nitrate sink otherwise compensated for in reefing


this clean / replace action, though cheating to the old guard effectively resets an aquariums lifespan like backflushing a filter does at a large zoo.
It is a way to make reefs run multigenerational, not just years. No lifespan limit, we killed old tank syndrome in that thread it’s a dead concept now


Even Paul B associates detritus care in his old reef, both as the RUGF design and the diatom filtration de cloud runs.

the oldest reefs manage detritus- some with finesse, and some by brute force. When aquarium people talk about brute force that’s reddit funny