Replacing a Sandbed

[wesman42]

I have 2 75 gallon tanks, each with a 30g sump. In one of them, I used Liferock and Liferock shapes to aquascape. The second, I used MarcoRocks cement. Well, after around 6 months, the cemented rockwork began to crumble, collapse, and ultimately just fall apart into lots of tiny pieces. I half blame myself for this, simply because it's not appropriate to rule out that I may have mixed it incorrectly. It seriously looks like ground zero in parts of my tank because I couldn't remove it. So, as a result, I can't maintain the sandbed because there's chunks of the stuff everywhere, my rocks are free-standing / stacked and it's been a disaster overall lol.

I'm looking for advice on how to do it. I could probably take off the top few layers then just add more aragonite, but I'm curious as to what the safest way to go about this would be...

 

[Deep dive coral]

Why not use a brand new kitty litter scooper and soft the pieces out. No need to start over completely.

 

[InkedReefLady]

Is there anyway you can drain the tank while you take the sand out? We ran a DSB for YEARS and when we finally decided to change the sand out (new DSB) we drained the tank, took everyone out/moved to a Rubbermaid tub and used a Home Depot bucket head to suck out all the old sand. My husband and I had the buddy system where I took the sand out, and he dumped it in the trash. That wet sand is HEAVY!

Good luck!

 

[wesman42]

Well, I'd like to use a scooper but the pieces are the size of the aragonite. It exploded everywhere and it's between rocks, under rocks even. The whole thing seems shot. I don't want to disrupt the stability of the tank though so tearing it down isn't an option...I could do a larger water change while changing some of it out but I'm not sure that'll really work either.

 

[Blitheran]

If you dont want disrupt your tanks balance so what you could do is each water change remove a ittle sand each time. Until it is all gone then slowly introduce new sand.