NEVER Remove Sand! But Why?

[Aqua Man]

We bought a used tank at the first of the year. The ad said it’s still running with no livestock. Tank is a 20 long AIO.
we arrived to inspect the tank, found out that there were actually a pair of clown fish and some snails in the tank.
luckily we brought the buckets and tubs needed to transfer almost all the water, sand and rock.
Sand depth was not quite 2 in deep and filthy. The water was VERY yellow also. Without disturbing anything first, drained some water and caught the fish. Drained more water until just above the sand. Added one small rock with the fish and the rest in a separate bucket with some water.
when I started to scoop out the sand the smell was horrid, almost lost my breakfast.
Smell was like a hot day at the ocean, where some animals maybe were getting cooked and rotting in the sun. Yum!
45 minute drive home, started scrubbing the tank clean, still trying to keep my breakfast down. Cleaned and rinsed all equipment and tank with my well water. I didn’t have very much new saltwater mixed up, saved all but a couple gallons from the move. Added old water and the fish, topped off with the little bit of new water I had on hand. Did not put the old nasty sand back in. That was a month ago, fish are doing great. As nasty as that sand was, it was not
worth the risk of re using.

So the answer is, it depends!

 

[jda]

Sand has never been a problem for me either. I would never run a tank without three inches. Never. The benefits to denitrification, microfauna and phosphate buffering are just too great - nature does all of this better than we do.

If somebody does not want one, then cool... but let's do talk like they are somehow a huge issue or death trap. The people who had sand beds a few decades ago had vastly more success than a new reefer of today with no whining or fear or diatoms, dinos or needing 2-3 years to get a tank "mature." More people would be better off getting a 2-4 inch deep sand bed and getting some gulf live rock and just letting nature take over, rather than what people do today. The bottom line is that if you had a problem with your tank, then it was you who screwed it up, not the sand.

There is a link in my signature to a tank that I set up in May for a local contest. No quite ten pages, but it is pretty big for the size of the board. 3" of sand, no losses and a pretty nice tank only nine months in. I am not a good photo taker, but here is the start and then about a month ago... WITH SAND... June 12th to New Years Eve... I need to get some more recent photos.

Log? Here is my log... 12 year old sandbed with more added as it dissolves and a some swapped out in the front where I can get to it. I have a few conchs and cucumbers that keep it clean. This reef is 16 years old, NOT PAGES, and no losses. None. If people do build threads back when I started this reef, it would be hundreds of pages long. I have had to tear out the corals three or four times because they overgrew the tank.