Moving old sand to new tank

[Cabien]

Hi,

I am upgrading my tank from 85gal DP tank to 135 DP tank. I have my tank over 4 years. I am wonder if I can move my old sand from existing tank to new tank? I know most people said using new sand but sand are expensive. I am wonder if I can use old sand and add some additional new dry sand to it. Please advise.

Thanks,

 

[brandon429]

You must rinse it in tap water for hours, then ro, then move it over, no the bacteria don’t matter. moving no waste matters.

 

[rwreef]

You can, but it can create nutrient problems.

 

[brandon429]

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

please post pics of your job there when done, forty pages of tap rinse after pics. see post #1 for tank loss examples from those who skipped the rinse or used one handful of old sand in the new tank. Rinse 100% clear, then transfer, don’t take a 5% risk.

 

[Garf]

Hi,

I am upgrading my tank from 85gal DP tank to 135 DP tank. I have my tank over 4 years. I am wonder if I can move my old sand from existing tank to new tank? I know most people said using new sand but sand are expensive. I am wonder if I can use old sand and add some additional new dry sand to it. Please advise.

Thanks,

Just wash the old sand really well, and re-use.

 

[Billdogg]

If you move your fish and rocks first, you can use the remaining water in the tank to rinse it pretty well. Stir it up real well, allow the gunk to settle. Siphon off the gunk. Repeat process until you are out of tank water. If it's still gunky, add more saltwater to continue the process. That way you will preserve most of the life that is currently living there. Rinsing in tap water might be easier, but you'll lose anything alive.

 

[brandon429]

Bill, your way is unsafe, that's why no pattern threads for it


It only seems like it's easy to customize the process but reefs get lost if we do


have ten tanks depending on it live time, let's see. Ten is a very low data set anyway those few are likely to pull it off but let's see. Thread=make we need alternates.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

Rinse the crap out of it and reuse it.

 

[Rollman]

Sand is the reefs litter box. Go bare bottom, you wont regret

 

[brandon429]

I know that sounds jerk mode of me above.

but the truth is that comes from the gut punch loss I caused at nano-reef.com in public live time view in about 2008 ish its been so long and so many threads cannot recall

but that one incident taught me about detritus variability states and how they range tank to tank


now the truth is the rinser didn't go cloudless, there's no harm in using saltwater they just run out


we have to plan for their mistakes in move transfer threads no joke, about seven different things they'll do unstated that kills reefs


we knew even back in 2008 especially in these low dilution concentration tests that one better rinse clean

but folks were running out of saltwater on bigger jobs. inputting that partial rinse, and he said "Brandon all my corals are dead, some have detached"


and he posted a picture of a martian wasteland reef. gray. it hit me square in the thymus

Guthrie's one shot learning, but for reef tank transfers

much like every evil villain in a comic is spawned by a wrong, the sand rinsers offshoot developed and its a 100% retention rate. that's the real truth wasn't meaning to be roughshod above.

 

[brandon429]

when I had these posters for pages post close up details of their sand, in that thread, we saw nothing. sand and water and detritus and 5% doom.

in their hand for the picture nothing was wiggling, writhing or crawling.

yes some worms developed there, and we're killing them in the name of safety, but the patterns from the job simply show they come back. my own reef has been blasted more than anyone's and its documented, yet I have worm tracks today. fifteen years of the action. regenerates, that's key.

so moving partially rinsed sand honestly does work 98% of the time its likely Bill has moved one that way, thousands of others have.

but that one loss, in public, sting of the accountability of a live work thread, will simply make a person never allow under 100% retention rate again. they'll overdo what's necessary to never have it again.

The costlier a reef tank is the more on the scale of blast rinsing you want to be.

someone needs to write an article about how many opposite permitted actions have come to commonplace in reefing, what drives it

is it needs based or just snake oil salesmanship.

just how firm are the rules in reefing? good title.

imagine telling someone on CompuServe in 1997 that in a mere twenty years dumping half bottles of peroxide into reefs will be all the rage and that blast rinsing sand in tap doesn't cause harm for forty pages only good outcome pics over and over. they'd have banned you right off the map.

 

[Billdogg]

Brandon429 seems to have had a bad experience, probably after not rinsing old sand well enough. I have not. In the 30+ years I've been keeping marine systems, and a total of 20 or 30 different setups over the years (often 5+ systems at the same time) I have always resused some to most of the sand from whatever old tank to it's upgrade. It's fair to say that some of the substrate in my current 120DT is almost certainly from my original tank.

I've also moved any number of tanks with friends and we've almost always reused some of the sand.

If you want to use 100% new substrate, or as at least one person suggested, go barebottom, please do. But don't let anyone claim that to do it any other way is all doom and gloom - that just isn't true.

end of rant

 

[NinjaSeaTurtle]

I was going to use the Old sand when I purchased an existing set up. The tank was only 2 years old at the time but it took seconds to realize that the amount of gunk moving the sand was going to release into the water was probably Going to kill the carpet anemones the Ritteri and the few pieces of coral in the tank... I opted to get new sand, and kept just a cup or so of the old sand. The tanks live rock was able to keep everything in check and I had zero losses. The price of sand is cheap if it keeps you from starting over