Moving a 3 month old tank?

[RJKain-777]

I’m moving in 2 weeks, my biggest concern is my sand bed , my diamond goby, 2 high fin gobies and pistol shrimp move the sand around a lot, plus the nassarius snails...

Should I be worried about it? Just remove it to a 5 gallon bucket or 2 and put it back in? Or go bare bottom?

 

[Dom]

I would keep everything and use freshly rinsed sand when setting back up in the new location.

 

[RJKain-777]

I would keep everything and use freshly rinsed sand when setting back up in the new location.

Freshly rinsed, as in rinse my current sand? Or go buy new?

 

[Dom]

I'd play it safe and buy a new bag and thoroughly rinse it if it's dry sand. If it's live sand, obviously, no rinsing as you will damage nitrifying bacteria in the sand.

Theoretically, you could use your original sand, but be sure it is THOROUGHLY rinsed.

 

[Mical]

+1 on buying new. Save some of old sand just to seed

 

[brandon429]

Rinse your current sand to be safe. Dangerous not to rinse

MOVING HOUSE/AQUARIUM

Hi, I will be moving house in 2 weeks so the aquarium. I have a few questions about moving tank. It is a 80g with 15g sump. Few different types of fish, soft corals, LPS,anemone and invertibates. I am moving house only 5 minutes drive(literally). My questions are: Do I keep the old sand which I...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[RJKain-777]

If I have to buy new sand, I’ll go bare bottom. 40lbs of sand is $90 here. And this is an emergency move , so I’m spending money I didn’t plan already.

 

[brandon429]

you can rinse your old sand we show, don't have to buy new. The sand rinse thread is 23 pages of us rinsing existing beds in tap water to total perfection, then setting back up.

Whether you rinse, remove, replace, bac in the sandbed are not required for function they're just extras. a 3 mo old tank isnt likely to have the dangerous accumulations in the bed like a 3 yr tank, but we still power rinse 100% of the sand before re setting up just to be consistent, that's the only reason our rinse thread runs so well without ever having to test for ammonia or losing tanks. being consistent, not allowing for transfer errors is key.

 

[RJKain-777]

you can rinse your old sand we show, don't have to buy new. The sand rinse thread is 23 pages of us rinsing existing beds in tap water to total perfection, then setting back up.

Whether you rinse, remove, replace, bac in the sandbed are not required for function they're just extras. a 3 mo old tank isnt likely to have the dangerous accumulations in the bed like a 3 yr tank, but we still power rinse 100% of the sand before re setting up just to be consistent, that's the only reason our rinse thread runs so well without ever having to test for ammonia or losing tanks. being consistent, not allowing for transfer errors is key.

That’s fair, I didn’t think I’d have anything harmful in my sand, that’s why I’m asking. I’ll rinse the sand before setting it back up.

If I lose a little bacteria from it, it won’t harm my tank as I only have 3 small fish.

 

[brandon429]

what we do is pull sand, rinse in tap like an hour or so (long time) until its this clear below. Then, final rinse is in RO water to evacuate the tap.

This sandbed below was about 3 yrs running, and 13 yrs of corals are removed from the vase sitting out on the counter. upon refill it skips the cycle every time, my live rock isn't rinsed in tap/it takes over:

 

[brandon429]

my reef doesnt ever move or need sandbed blasting, I do it anyway just to participate lol in my sand rinse thread. Its a life-giving move, helps de-age tanks even if you arent moving.

theres rinsing, and then there's rinsing so clean its snowglobe effect, do that way.

 

[brandon429]

disclaimer: some worms died in this demo, aw.




three mos later, more worms come down from the rock/redux

 

[Anthony Cusumano]

ive been following @brandon429 since i joined this forum and the things he says just makes sense to me. how could rinsing sand damage bacteria? if that was the case kitchen cleaning products would be out of business!

 

[brandon429]

its even worse in the cycling forum. We are trained to think literally everything we do kills bacteria/stops a cycle.

bacteria are getting feed in about 200 ways we never contemplate. *we run a thread about moving tanks home to home successfully (or lfs to your home in portions etc) because without some hard fast rules, outcomes are literally all over the place from success to total wipeout.

We found it wasnt the bac being removed, it was when they were overwhelmed by rot/mud/detritus being kicked up that the problems happened. with no detritus moved, we have literally not one loss in transfer. A goby here and there, not the whole tank.

 

[lapin]

Going bare bottom will stress some of your live stock.

my diamond goby, 2 high fin gobies and pistol shrimp move the sand around a lot, plus the nassarius snails...

 

[link81]

3 months old?
thats just baby sand.
my vote is to re-use it. I don't think i'd even bother with a rinse.
maybe run a filter sock when you re-fill it for a while.