Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[brandon429]

Removing remote deep sand bed

I setup a removable deep sand bed in my sump 9 months ago but now I’d like to remove it to give me more room in the sump. What do you think the impact to tank chemistry might be and how to mitigate any negatives?

www.reef2reef.com

Remote DSB in sump. A massive, huge, massive amount of working filtration surface area.

instantly disconnected not in partials. updates to come, drum roll

 

[58e970b2-3f88-4897-87ba-5]

Just wanted to say thanks for warning me and helping me rinse my sand.

This is 1 minute after filling the tank by dumping buckets of water in.

I ended up using a slightly different method than discussed here. I used a 1 litre cup and diaper sprayer (fairly high pressure water jet) to rinse sand in small quantities. Basically throw some sand in the cup, blast it to knock off gunk, then dump off the dirty water into another big bucket (to dispose of later). Did 12 rinses per ladle sized scoop of sand. It took a while, but some good music and not having to go out in the snow made it an acceptable evening (glad I only needed to rinse 1 bad of sand for my tank).

 

[brandon429]

100% creative and appreciated so very much

that is snowglobe clean

b

 

[58e970b2-3f88-4897-87ba-5]

Just going to leave this here as a warning to others. I originally tried rinsing oolite using pumps and filter socks. Tried 200, 5, and 1 micron ones without success.

This is what it looked like after about a week of rinsing with variations of this setup. Essentially pumps to stir up (plus occasionally a hand or ladle) and another pump to try to filter the murky water through a filter sock.

I gave up on the oolite yesterday and switched up to caribsea select. The select was just as murky (and seemed just as hopeless at first), but a re-read of this thread helped me find a rinsing technique that actually worked.
Whatever that murkiness is seems to mostly just go straight through a filter sock.

 

[brandon429]

Two hundred pounds pre rinse. That was such a thorough rinse it's laser clear.

Should I go ahead and do the tank swap?

So I have a 75 gallon that’s been up and running for 3 years. I also have my newly setup 225 up and running a week now with cycled rock. I’m trying to decide when and how to move everything over to the new tank. Rock, fish and coras will all be moving to a much larger space. They are currently...

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[NeonRabbit221B]

Question. with backstory

I hate vacuuming my sand in my nano because the tank is upstairs. Stirring up detritus can make the house stink and I keep all of my equipment downstairs in my fishroom (1 tank got through the gf’s blockade). I am wondering if it’s alright to discontinue vacuuming sand altogether (was doing it bi-monthly) and let my pistol/goby stir it up overall. My plan is to switch to a yearly task of a full full rip clean and replace of the sand. I could leisurely rinse the sand after replacing it with prerinsed and take off running with a clean system reset and keep my house clean and free of ocean smell year around.

thoughts?

 

[brandon429]

I bet it will work. The instances where disturbing some sand and getting loss are a low percentage.

but in forty pages even a few losses would make the thread ineffective so we just advocate max rinse in all settings because that’s universally safe with no loss rate at the expense of everyone doing a deep clean even though 98% can get away with not

a single loss recycle would be heartbreaking like letting a friend down.


you are certainly not sending in a disruptive animal over a blackened waste lined bed, your sands have been clean not long ago that’s why I really feel thats safe


if you can smell detritus kicked up in the house, and others too ill be amazed

it really does waft into the room?

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

I think it is more the stirring up the sandbed and just the tank breathing more. The smell is not something that bothers me or my girlfriend to a large extent but more just an annoyance of moving equipment and buckets around upstairs. After I setup my AWG again I shouldn't have many reasons to have any equipment or buckets upstairs. Was kinda just curious if anyone simply does rip cleans on a scheduled basis instead of vacuuming.

 

[brandon429]

I sure do that. My tank gets only top water changes till i see the glass yellowing and gha profusely growing on the glass very fast


then I’ll deep clean as disassembly

 

[Dkmoo]

This is very interesting - i have always been on the camp of the "traditional" way and letting the sand reach its natural equilibrium/maturity. I read thru the OP and a portion of the 40+ subsequent pages but admit i didn't read thru all 40. I can definitely see the benefits of the deep cleaning/removing and rinsing sand instead of letting it naturally "age". I have a 4 year old "aged" sand that have had issues in the past but has stabilized in recent years. I do light vacuuming of the surface when i do water changes (once 2 - 3 weeks depending on how dirty it looks) and rarely do a "deep vacuum" so would definitely not call it "clean" by any means. However, there is also a TON of biodiversity: pods would crawl on the surface in broad day light, the cross section of sand on my glass pane is filled with tunnels and diff colors and pockets, and when I feed, the sand literally comes alive with all the worms and tentacles come out and forming little "sarlaac pits" everywhere. I don't plan on rinsing it now since i don't mind the manageable amount out of dirt and algae growth from my regular husbandry and the tanks condition has generally been trending up - my mantra is usually to "leave it alone if its not causing major issues" when it come to this hobby.

All that said, I do plan on moving and upgrading to a much bigger tank in the next year so i would appreciate some of @brandon429 opinion/advice on the below related to how best to plan/execute this future move:

1) Based on the above description, would you think my sand bed has reached balance? or at least closer to it than other reefers that you dealt with that had issues and benefitted more from rinsing vs keep going on the traditional method to reach stability?
2) Assuming things keep going well in the next year until I move and I want to maintain this "aged" sand with all its biodiversity to seed the new tank, what would be the best way to move it? I will be moving the corals/rocks/fish in separate containers and try not to disturb the sand. How long would the critters in the sand stay alive in this environment. I plan to have everything transferred in 48 hours.
3) for the new sand that i'll be adding to the tank, should I still rinse it if I plan to keep the old sand and follow the "traditional method".

Thanks

 

[brandon429]

thank you so much for posting a true customized challenge! the part and parcel moves are easy, this one has zest because you have legit earned a benthic community.

our main tenet is that most reefs can transfer without killing everything, but a loss rate of even 1 tank per 5 pages is unacceptable. relocating stinky detritus has this degree of slight risk so on page one I linked a worst-case outcome to eliminate the outliers that would be heart breaking were we to take a chance on moving mass tanks and always valuing the bugs over the greater stability

that being said, an active tank like yours hasn't sat and stratified with zones of rot locked in and pocketed. its been turned over by hand or micro beast and you can see most of our tank pre-shots are mainly mud and nothing that wiggles. the occasional worm track

sadly, we have been decimating that zone in order to always preserve hundreds or thousands in coral

but in your tank Id concentrate on clean rock transfers, moving no detritus with rocks by good saltwater pre rinsing and twisting swishing in clean water to cast off adherents before the move. clean rocks will run your new setup nicely

regarding the sand that's in tank, mostly drained water, your fish already out and what corals you can get out separated and then the rock also separately clean and ready to transfer, maybe you can net out a bunch of bugs and move them over the sifting buckets/brainstorm with me/not sure

surely some bugs can be caught this way, xferred safely into new sand rinsed to the degree you accept a loss variable if its not blasted clean.

you could add netted bugs and worms back to blast cleaned new tank sand, best of both worlds. some bugs will seed down off the live rock, holed up inside during the xfer and swish-cleaning

and in a year bam you're back to ideal balance

hows that for a beginning plan thank you much for posting


Side note: Dom posted a two year update post sandbed removal due to persistent cyano

My Cyano has returned...

I'm dealing with a 33 long, so I think if I ordered that many, my tank would look infested. I like to get crabs and snails from the shoreline down by my house. I usually keep them stocked up in a 10 gallon and replenish as needed. It's a cheap way to keep a CUC and quarantine them before adding...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Dkmoo]

regarding the sand that's in tank, mostly drained water, your fish already out and what corals you can get out separated and then the rock also separately clean and ready to transfer, maybe you can net out a bunch of bugs and move them over the sifting buckets/brainstorm with me/not sure

thanks for the response!

Yeah i think the quoted part above is going to be the issue to tackle. I get that we want to move the good stuff and leave the bad. is the concern for not moving the sand here still related to the pockets of excess ditritus/gunk that will be released into the new tank from the physical transfer (ie scooping them from one to the other)? I know in my sand, even if it's relatively stable overall, it may not be stable uniformly - ie, its not like every cubic inch of the sand has the same ditritus concentration vs ditritus processing biome. Left undisturbed, the benthic organisms wil lgo thru the tank over time to keep it in check but scooping/transfering them is going to release the bad pockets. That's the concern right?

i think while it won't be difficult for me to net the big organism - there's at least 20-40 1inch+ worms that i can catch, mostly the spaghetti, feather, and bristle variety but also a few i haven't bothered to ID, the big limpets, nudys, and other shell creatures can probably pick out too if i'm careful. But - what about all the microscopic ones and all the pods? I know its the big guys that's probably doing all the heavy lifting and there's probably still enough in the rock and fuge to reseed it but i'm not sure what the impact of a lack of diversity, even if temporary, can have on the stability of the sandbed. I know there are options post move to mitigate this with commercial products to reintroduce biodiversity but seem like a waste to not use what was in the old sand. That'll be a decision to weigh against the risk polluting the new tank with excess detritus and toxin.

At least i have time to figure this out and do more research.

one crazy idea that just popped into my head is to move the old tank INTO the new tank, then carefully disassemble the side panes while leaving the sand undisturbed, and either just leave the bottom pane in the tank, or do the table-cloth trick with it. lol..not sure how feasible it is, just throwing it out there...

 

[Vwluv10338]

theres not a single thing wrong with that tank, Im sad we can't put it through surgery though lol only for the sheer fun of repeats

If more dry rock starts went that smoothly and looked as well the invasion posts daily would drop by 2/3

it cannot harm a cycle to clean, so run it as you like. just know the standard for concern is about 9 more levels beyond that. feel free to lift any rock out at any time, and simply clean off with saltwater down the sink, set back.

instead of always changing water params...when the real challenge sets in

a quick siphon of sand areas, put the sand back as you remove things in cleaning


this is as the tank ages with its first animals in it, a few corals wouldn't harm right now you have the light for them and its progressing

don't react much to nitrate and po4 readings in the first six months, be physically busy vs tinkering with params and test kits busy. testing for nitrate and po4 in efforts to reduce, and thereby reduce invasion work we expect, is recipe for dinos.

if you exchange tedious chemistry for basic salinity and temp control, and move all the focus to creative export right when you need it, the system will mature perfectly.

it will be a lot of work up front, for about a year or so, because that's the price of dry live rocking.

the one thing our thread will show even in reduced cleaning, more preventative approaches is the physical work vs chemical work, see how many pages we have here not discussing a test kit, which is really just an approximation its usually no where near what a calibrated probe would read...the price for dry rocking is more work, for a while

Still think I’m on the right track just doing normal siphoning? I had no issues with my dry rock other tank with no sand but I ended up with dino issues in that one.

 

[brandon429]

those growths appear to be topical only not as sand cross sectioned penetration, what if we just burn out all that stuff with forced cleaning and then a cheap pond sterilizer off amazon/brainstorming

 

[saltyfins]

ok. so I have read 10 pages, and links...still reading. but will this help with all the issues like bryopsis, GHA, cyano etc...? I have a 125g and I am sick of fighting this stuff...sick of adding chemicals, and this seems like a KISS approach. but also, what about levels of nitrates, phosphates, things like that? will it even out? did I miss this? I am going to plan this out, for one of hubby's bass tournament weekends, and go forward with it. However, I just feel like I missed this info. of course, I have lots more pages of reading. this is such a no brainer, I cant believe no one else is really doing it!

 

[brandon429]

I have to admit that sand rinsing is only a fractional part of algae control, what we do directly to the algae is often more important.

bropsis, people like fluconazole and vibrant to try

GHA however in my opinion has a slightly stronger link to sandbed waste, a clean bed simply makes GHA grow back a little slower than a dirty one leaking a bunch of fuel.

where we shine is cyano prevention and dinos battles in a few cases, but not all. Alexreefer didn't get much help from sand rinsing, turns out dirty method worked better for his unique presentation


our main benefit for the battles for bryopsis and brush algae etc are that we make a totally clean tank so that if you have to remove rocks to access down low portions for direct control, you wont recycle your reef or kick up massive feed for the plants in the process.

 

[brandon429]

Another small snippet of info found in the postverse

Anyone who keeps up with Humblefish disease control method for marine fish has seen the mention of sandbeds housing tomonts or other disease states helping them ride out fallow and treatment periods

And how have we largely handled marine aquarium sandbeds the last twenty years> hands off. only the crazies rinsed

So as a side result of knowing that sandbed bacteria are bioload in a reef tank, they're not critical mass, the tomonts got the boot in some cases, that's fair to say.

because we can access sandbeds now as deeply as required without recycle, the default mode no more is waste storage.


we function cleanly here to be different than all other threads. nonstorers.

fish disease is being selected against
am directly attempting to link sandbed rinse biology with disease control.

 

[saltyfins]

Another small snippet of info found in the postverse

Anyone who keeps up with Humblefish disease control method for marine fish has seen the mention of sandbeds housing tomonts or other disease states helping them ride out fallow and treatment periods

And how have we largely handled marine aquarium sandbeds the last twenty years> hands off. only the crazies rinsed

So as a side result of knowing that sandbed bacteria are bioload in a reef tank, they're not critical mass, the tomonts got the boot in some cases, that's fair to say.

because we can access sandbeds now as deeply as required without recycle, the default mode no more is waste storage.


we function cleanly here to be different than all other threads. nonstorers.

fish disease is being selected against
am directly attempting to link sandbed rinse biology with disease control.

I am fighting this in the sand bed. it's a year old, and this stuff was brown...now it's GREEN,

I have to admit that sand rinsing is only a fractional part of algae control, what we do directly to the algae is often more important.

bropsis, people like fluconazole and vibrant to try

GHA however in my opinion has a slightly stronger link to sandbed waste, a clean bed simply makes GHA grow back a little slower than a dirty one leaking a bunch of fuel.

where we shine is cyano prevention and dinos battles in a few cases, but not all. Alexreefer didn't get much help from sand rinsing, turns out dirty method worked better for his unique presentation


our main benefit for the battles for bryopsis and brush algae etc are that we make a totally clean tank so that if you have to remove rocks to access down low portions for direct control, you wont recycle your reef or kick up massive feed for the plants in the process.

 

[saltyfins]

this started out as a brown, then it's turning green. It's on everything in my tank. power heads, gyre, rocks....what is this? tank was moved from a 65 to a 125 and new sand and some new rock. maybe 30 lbs. only started having issues when I put in some Microbacter 7. thats it. that's when all my stuff started happening. I have adjusted flow, and no help, doesnt blow off. Now once again treating with Reef Rx. please help

 

[brandon429]

Real reefs get those growths it doesn’t mean anything is bad with your water, that algae may enjoy the bright lighting we supply and lack of matched grazers to control it, among the hundreds of options for ridding algae online ours is a method of direct access cleaning

what about siphoning up the sandbed growths, replace back with rinsed sand taken during the cleaning. the rocks can be lifted out and applied with peroxide externally that will kill off algae, both are physical cleaning actions

reef rx is fluconazole I think. That's been known to cause cyano issues in the fluconazole work threads, that appears to be the case here as well.