Replacing sand in tank
- Thread starter Fishko
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Jib
Well-Known Member
I’m on mobile or I’d link a update I made about this. I did the same thing. Check out my build thread. I have a post about what I did with a link to another fantastic thread on the topic.
Jib
Well-Known Member
Direct siphon might not be a good idea, but changing out the sand bed is completely doable.
Paging dr herman
from my fav movie
this is how I see it: customizations of the job work about 70% of the time, meaning just removing sand with the tank running or removing the sand in sections, not everyone’s reef is filled with bad waste it likely will still work.
but some are full of waste, or teetering on invasion and this sets it off in the new tank vs starting cleaned and controlled with rinsed sand.
and we’ve no pics here to see status. By default the sand rinse thread shows 100% safety using instant swaps but you have to tap rinse the sand new or old before it goes back in the tank, tap rinse, and then re ramp the lights afterwards for a week for the new tank to skip the cycle and skip bleaching. It will not have an invasion, we just deep cleaned it and gave the reef all new water, match temp and salinity and everything will transfer safely with all new cloudless sand underneath. The safest way you can do the job is take down the entire reef in parts, refill a clean glass tank with water and truly cloudless pre rinsed sand.
the old sand isn’t removed in parts, it’s the last thing left in the parted out reef and you scoop it out and toss it. before you add new sand it must be thoroughly pre rinsed in tap water, don’t fear bacterial insult, pre rinse new sand in tap water until clean.
once the tank is refilled with water and cloudless sand,
then set in rocks you swished clean in saltwater, to jet off waste.
cloudless rocks (Rinsed in saltwater) and cloudless sand (rinsed in tap water so you never run low while rinsing) builds the skip cycle reset tank
you can rinse the sand in RO water after tap rinse, to jet out tap, if you want. Tap in the grains in forty gallons dilution reef water isn’t lethal anyway but an ro final step rinse is fine.
then corals and fish in last, re ramp lights for a week until back to full intensity. This completely cleans your reef of waste, and in the process any sand you want is installed, after pre rinse.
there is no waste or invader mass, purely coral rock and white sand. The bacteria in the rocks were all we cared about, sandbed bac are expendable but the waste can be bad so we isolated it.
from my fav movie
this is how I see it: customizations of the job work about 70% of the time, meaning just removing sand with the tank running or removing the sand in sections, not everyone’s reef is filled with bad waste it likely will still work.
but some are full of waste, or teetering on invasion and this sets it off in the new tank vs starting cleaned and controlled with rinsed sand.
and we’ve no pics here to see status. By default the sand rinse thread shows 100% safety using instant swaps but you have to tap rinse the sand new or old before it goes back in the tank, tap rinse, and then re ramp the lights afterwards for a week for the new tank to skip the cycle and skip bleaching. It will not have an invasion, we just deep cleaned it and gave the reef all new water, match temp and salinity and everything will transfer safely with all new cloudless sand underneath. The safest way you can do the job is take down the entire reef in parts, refill a clean glass tank with water and truly cloudless pre rinsed sand.
the old sand isn’t removed in parts, it’s the last thing left in the parted out reef and you scoop it out and toss it. before you add new sand it must be thoroughly pre rinsed in tap water, don’t fear bacterial insult, pre rinse new sand in tap water until clean.
once the tank is refilled with water and cloudless sand,
then set in rocks you swished clean in saltwater, to jet off waste.
cloudless rocks (Rinsed in saltwater) and cloudless sand (rinsed in tap water so you never run low while rinsing) builds the skip cycle reset tank
you can rinse the sand in RO water after tap rinse, to jet out tap, if you want. Tap in the grains in forty gallons dilution reef water isn’t lethal anyway but an ro final step rinse is fine.
then corals and fish in last, re ramp lights for a week until back to full intensity. This completely cleans your reef of waste, and in the process any sand you want is installed, after pre rinse.
there is no waste or invader mass, purely coral rock and white sand. The bacteria in the rocks were all we cared about, sandbed bac are expendable but the waste can be bad so we isolated it.
Last edited:
That’s plenty, for every nano bioload it will certainly be enough surface area for the swap or even if you went instant bare bottom
all set take pics if u can we really like to collect before and afters
all set take pics if u can we really like to collect before and afters
homer1475
Figuring out the hobby one coral at a time.
@brandon429 is the man when it comes to removing and rinsing sand.
Alexreefer had a goby die when we flipped his sb for cleaning and trying to beat dinos (still came back)
I felt horrible but had to rate it as selection at work...minimum endurance required for fighting the horrible scourge wasn’t in that fish. The system was tipped to a point of needing to save the tank, without dinos he probably wouldn’t have messed with it but action was needed.
the only other loss I saw written on the sand works thread was another goby interestingly. since it was these two fish and no other losses over time the act of sandbed replacing for whatev reason seems stable tank to tank, given those cloudless runs and light ramps
I felt horrible but had to rate it as selection at work...minimum endurance required for fighting the horrible scourge wasn’t in that fish. The system was tipped to a point of needing to save the tank, without dinos he probably wouldn’t have messed with it but action was needed.
the only other loss I saw written on the sand works thread was another goby interestingly. since it was these two fish and no other losses over time the act of sandbed replacing for whatev reason seems stable tank to tank, given those cloudless runs and light ramps
