Moving - DSB Plan seeking suggestions

[Dancingmad]

Moving tanks to a new house tomorrow. This will be my third move w/ 2 tanks (65g and 75g). Seeking comments/suggestions/snarky remarks on my current plan to tackle moving the deep sand bed.

I have 3 tiger conchs and an engineer goby that's about 12 inches long that keep the bed seemingly clean and aerated.

DSB is a mixture of crushed oyster shell (Requires some extra rinsing, but $3 for 50lb bag! Also an awesome buffer) and live sand. I plan on discarding half of the sand bed and replacing it with fresh live sand. The sand that I do keep will be rinsed with RO water to remove critter waste and any malicious chemical buildup that can occur in a DSB.

 

[ScottMyers123]

My advise would be to replace all the sand and crushed oyster shell. Anytime you do a move it is best to replace the substrate.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed fully. You can for sure also power rinse yours, nothing partial but the meanest rinse on the planet so you transfer no detritus, but new sand hasn't been in close nutrient contact for po4 incursion like the old has

I see it as not critical but additional hedge in your favor to go new. Sand bed bacteria are rarely critical filtration mass, typically the rocks and other surfaces do fine when xferred. Starting with new sand rarely causes a tank to have insufficient filtration, it's the fish bio loading that creates exceptions.

Rinsing isn't antibacterial, so if you must seed a mostly new bed with a little rinsed seed that's no foul either.

 

[cloak]

I would just siphon out the top 1/4" or so and set this aside in an ice chest with some water. Remove the rest of the sand and rinse it thoroughly with the garden hose. Once it's clean go ahead and add it to your tank. Put the live sand on top of that.
If all is well in your tank now and your not having any problems with algae growth there's really no need to replace any of it IMO. GL.

 

[Bozoman]

How did you end up moving your DSB and how did it go?

I am about to move my 3+ year old 80G tank and 5" sugar fine DSB into a new house and a new 180G tank. I would like to reuse my sand, as it appears as white and loose as it was the day it finished cycling, and add about 10-12 gallons of new sand to make up the difference in volume. The DSB is full of life with minimal visible surface algae and houses a pearly jawfish and a randalii pistol shrimp/high fin goby pair as well as a plethora of nassarius snails and 2 strawberry conches.

 

[Dancingmad]

Wow - I'm due for an update! The move itself was logistically awesome and went off without a hitch, what happened two days later was a disaster. I'll start with the sand bed, my decision(+why), and what I would do if I had to move again.

I pitched all the sand in the 75G tank and was planning to let the Conchs run bare-bottom. I covered the underside of the tank to encourage algae growth and supplemented with a wafer every few days. Figured the barebottom would be cool for them since I read conchs are aquacultured in essentially cement ponds.

The 65G had an outrageous sandbed -8". I pitched half of it and rinsed the other half like crazy w/ RO water. I felt like I needed half of it to provide a habitat for the Goby. Moves are exceptionally stressful for all the inhabitants and gobys need their home.

Ultimately I chose to pitch most of my sand because frankly when you're moving the sand is going to be dirty, require a significant amount of effort (and muscle). Your animals are going to be the highest priority. Forget about that dirty ol' sand. Buy new. Even if takes a couple of days before you can pick it up I would say adding sand to an existing tank is much less trouble than moving old sand.

The move was as expected -- Lots of totes w/ airstones. Thankfully it was just 20 minutes down the road. Simply drained, caught live stock, loaded the tanks, and drove off in a caravan of SUVs. Set everything back up, life support systems going: Victory!

Two days later - Power cut off b/c the seller set a cut off date after my turn on date (systemic error), and 3 days worth of runaround b/c one is a "billing party" selling energy through credits from the physical energy provider. The finger pointery was epic and I was lead on for 3 days until the issue was resolved(Power up!). I attempted to use my PC's UPS (power supply) to keep the life support up. Simply couldn't afford a generator that would keep up the A/C (heat was another serious factor here - Texas heat is...unpleasant in the summer).

At the end of it I lost a 8 yr old brittle starfish (aprox 16" across - named facehugger after Aliens); 4 yr old coral banded shrimp(Senior Pinch-Pinch) that was quite large, and 3 yr old blue hippo(Freckles). I was given a $20 credit for my trouble. Considering the magnitude of this disaster I didn't lose that much livestock...:-(

Anyway - due to the loss of livestock I eventually combined everything together in one tank. Its been a bit overcrowd, but that is ending soon. 150G T/W is cycling now (woot woot!). Is this an appropriate time for a build thread?