Is it safe to remove entire sandbed at once?

[Jake_the_reefer]

So my 20g tank has turned from being a show tank to a growout system/frag tank. I have about 20 lbs of rock and some nice sized chunks of marinepure in a hob filter. I would like to empty my sandbed to make it easier to lay down frag disks. Would it be okay to remove the entire sandbed at once or should I do it 25% at a time? Its extremely dirty stirring it up a little bit causes a black cloud. (This tank is rather neglected)

 

[Retro Reefer]

I would just siphon out small amounts at a time with each water change, removing it all at once may be risky.

 

[DivingTheWorld]

I would just siphon out small amounts at a time with each water change, removing it all at once may be risky.

This. Take your time and don't rush it.

 

[Dolelo96]

I siphoned out 1/4 each water change. You definitely want to do your water change after siphoning, because of the crud that may be stirred up

 

[Sailfin11]

I would drain the tank, take all frags and rock out, remove the sand, rinse the tank completely, then add new water, and put everything back in. Taking out sand can cause a lot of problems and instability, but I believe doing it this way should avoid most of that. Essentially, you are creating a new system with the original live rock. Cheers

 

[Cwentz758]

BRS had issues with this in their 160 build I think. Killed the whole tank.

 

[brandon429]

They did it wrong, BRS didn’t use a known safe order of ops. Here’s 30 pages of instant removes.

Jake you’ve seen this thread I thought

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

it’s safer to remove all at once since some systems have dangerous forms of waste in the bed, vs inert ones. Sectional removal is safe, people show but there are times we need it just done. In certain tank invasion scenarios we don’t want sectional removal to keep feeding the targets (dinos, we rip a lot of sandbeds to beat dinos then put back clean beds after)

If brs followed that operational flow=success

what not to do: instantly rob the tank of a massive organics cushion then continue minimal feeding and not changing water while shining full production lighting on the no bed setup. we do opposite: we rob waste in disassembly cleaning but decrease lighting and increase feed water change work for a month or so, anticipating needs. Jon opens the thread with two rip cleans in one month, on a perfectly running reef, then gets ICP data for his tank afterwards.

bacteria from a sandbed are not required in a reef system, and live rocks do not take on more bacteria to make up for lack of sand, we show.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

The concern with removing a sand bed is, at least in part, exposing anoxic regions that may have toxic hydrogen sulfide.

 

[NanoDJS]

You have got some great advice here, and like was just said , I would only worry about the hydrogen sulfide. Just shut it down and remove all livestock , and then remove sand clean tank , add new water ect... dont do it "live" on the fly unless the whole tank is empty of life already. You might get a mini cycle after , but its only a 20g , I would just rip it down.

 

[brandon429]

I’ve also began linking our sandbed work scope to what we see in reef convention tanks / recently moved systems who never fail to meet a start date $ and who never lose animals going or coming

detritus controllers. They relocate clean wet substrate.


has implications for cycle biology (nobody stalls, five hundred tanks ready by Friday) and huge conventions have no tanks with sandbeds showing dark zone stratification....nobody moves an old bed when cash and a start date is on the line. all reef tank convention instant reefs / $30K in animals housed as long as you want to keep the dates going simply transfer clean sand (if at all, bare bottom is raging currently) and established biofilters, namely live rock. Using that logic: it’s safe to remove sandbeds all at once because five hundred convention reefs for twenty years