Changing over to live sand

[reefchaser]

What's the best way to take out my crush coral and put live sand in with out creating a cycle in my tank?

 

[Tahoe61]

How long has the tank been set up?
You can always play it safe by removing portions at a time.
Since you want to use live sand you'll not be rinsing it so expect some water cloudyness. If you use a large diameter piece of PVC pipe you can manuver the pipe to use as a funnel, spreading the sand along the bottom rather exposing the new sand to water column thereby hopefully reducing the amount of suspened particles.

 

[reefchaser]

Its been setup for about year now.

 

[WhoKnew]

I just removed my crushed coral by using my siphon during water changes. It didn't disturb my corals or fish. It just took a while to get most of it out. Incas also given the advice of using PVC pipe to place my new sand in the tank. It worked like a charm. Good luck.

 

[PaulKreider]

Have a lot of water on hand for a waterchange right after. Your tank will be flooded with nitrates.

 

[Mike J.]

All the posts above are correct. The best way would be to siphon it out; you'll get most of the detritus out with the substrate that way. It might take a few water changes.

Putting Sand in an existing tank. - YouTube

 

[reefchaser]

Thank you guys for all the help

 

[SudzFD]

Why?

 

[reefchaser]

Should I rinse the sand or no?

 

[Bad Company]

Why not just add the sand? It will fill the spaces in between the crushed coral and solve the detritius problem, no? I have both in my tank because I wanted this guy:

 

[reefchaser]

How does it look with crush coral and sand together?

 

[Bad Company]

See the pic. The sand tends to sink down into the coral. More obvious if you have sand sifters of some sort.

 

[DChen]

Question. what if you have live sand already and you want to add more? how would you want to do this without interrupting whatever is in the tank?