Should I remove the live sand ?

[Reefman603]

This Saturday I will be moving a established 60g reef aquarium to my house and setting it back up re using everything including the water. Should I remove the sand and wash it before I put the sand back in the tank ? Or leave the sand in the tank ? I’ve been told that removing the sand is what I should do and rinse it well, but I was also told the other day that if I do that I will send the tank into a re cycle and kill everything in the tank ? So remove and wash the sand or not...

 

[brandon429]

twenty pages of work:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

It’s better to rinse it.

From the thread: at no time will a rinse cause a recycle. Never happens not once, nor the upcoming twenty. If you move the sand without a rinse, you may or may not get a mini cycle. That’s what the whole thread distills down to, variability vs nonvariation. Taking your chances is non rinse, absolute safety is rinsing.

Let’s say you didn’t rinse it and the detritus isn’t so packed as to be a source of rotting ammonia. Then it’s not dangerous, it’s just invader feed in the next system. You are encountering a forced intercept point, to clean the diaper with the last chance it’s likely to get until some external force requires a rinsing again in the future. This resets the age of your sandbed, before it causes enduring cyano problems in the new tank. Moving over detritus never helps, it just never helps.


The number one target in all my GHA threads and cyano threads and skip cycle threads is clouding detritus. You have a chance to manage the number one cause of half a million dollars in invaded tanks and that’s just last year’s threads... compounding detritus is the fundamental cause of most headaches in reefing regarding long term ecosystem stability, you have an intercept opportunity.

 

[ca1ore]

Depends a bit on the condition of the sand. If it is heavily laden with detritus then I’d absolutely wash it thoroughly, or even use new sand. As long as there is a decent amount of rock, there’s really no reason for the tank to re-cycle. Just feed it sparingly for a week or so.

 

[Dkeller_nc]

Personally, I'd wash the stuffing out of it, then rinse it with RODI just to remove any chloramine in the tap water held up between the sand particles. Unless you had a massively overstocked tank with very little live rock, there should be more than enough bacteria in the rock to take care of ammonia production by the animals.

The only exception I'd make to this would be if you have a sand bed that's truly live (i.e., from the ocean ala true live rock) that's packed with little critters, in which case I'd leave about 1/3rd of the seawater in the tank, stir the snot out of the sand bed to kick up as much detritus as possible, then siphon out the dirty water. Then I'd put the sand in a bucket with some new seawater just covering it, and take it to the new tank.

But these days, very few people actually have live sand beds.

 

[Reefman603]

twenty pages of work:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

It’s better to rinse it.

From the thread: at no time will a rinse cause a recycle. Never happens not once, nor the upcoming twenty. If you move the sand without a rinse, you may or may not get a mini cycle. That’s what the whole thread distills down to, variability vs nonvariation. Taking your chances is non rinse, absolute safety is rinsing.

Let’s say you didn’t rinse it and the detritus isn’t so packed as to be a source of rotting ammonia. Then it’s not dangerous, it’s just invader feed in the next system. You are encountering a forced intercept point, to clean the diaper with the last chance it’s likely to get until some external force requires a rinsing again in the future. This resets the age of your sandbed, before it causes enduring cyano problems in the new tank. Moving over detritus never helps, it just never helps.


The number one target in all my GHA threads and cyano threads and skip cycle threads is clouding detritus. You have a chance to manage the number one cause of half a million dollars in invaded tanks and that’s just last year’s threads... compounding detritus is the fundamental cause of most headaches in reefing regarding long term ecosystem stability, you have an intercept opportunity.

Thank you ! Great info.

 

[cracker]

Agreed on great info . I swapped tanks .Sand & all I did rinse the sand. It was filthy ! this was a 75 gls tank all done in one day . I had Zero issues .
I don't know your situation. How big is the tank & how deep is the sand? Did you clean/vacuum regular? How far is the move,Lot's of variables.
I would wash out the sand really well. As Brandon stated . This is a perfect chance for a deep clean .

 

[Reefman603]

Agreed on great info . I swapped tanks .Sand & all I did rinse the sand. It was filthy ! this was a 75 gls tank all done in one day . I had Zero issues .
I don't know your situation. How big is the tank & how deep is the sand? Did you clean/vacuum regular? How far is the move,Lot's of variables.
I would wash out the sand really well. As Brandon stated . This is a perfect chance for a deep clean .

Tank is a 66 gallon Red Sea max 250, has about 2 maybe 3 inches of sand with a good amount of live rock. I’m transporting the tank about an hour from another house to my house and setting it back up and re using everything including most of the water except for 10 gallons that I will have mixed up fresh

 

[luckylepgw]

Tank is a 66 gallon Red Sea max 250, has about 2 maybe 3 inches of sand with a good amount of live rock. I’m transporting the tank about an hour from another house to my house and setting it back up and re using everything including most of the water except for 10 gallons that I will have mixed up fresh

Wish i knew to rinse the sand few weeks ago when i had to swap tanks. Nearly wiped out everything i had. I agree with the others, clean that sand.

 

[GTM42]

If you do decide to not replace, or rinse the sand do not disturb it. Leave it in the tank as you move it. If it is disturbed then all of the organics that have been living in the sand will go into your tank, and cause a re-cycle. I would recommend adding new live sand. When we move a tank at my store we either move the tank and keep the sand or add new live sand. While there is typically always a small re-cycle when you move a tank it is usually minimized when doing these things.

 

[FishyDP]

When moving a tank, I like to drain the tank down to about 10-15% water, stir the sand and siphon most of the dirty water out (leaving some water to keep the sand moist). This way you can remove much of the detritus, and conserve some of the beneficial bacteria. This is what I have done and it seems to speed up the cycle when you get the tank back up and running. It is almost like buying "live sand", you are starting out with some beneficial bacteria.

A safe bet is to probably completely clean the sand and start with "new sand", but IME the cycle will take longer or you will get more mini cycles, as the new sand is being populated with bacteria.

 

[Reefman603]

After reading through the comments I think I've come to the conclusion that I will remove the sand, give it a very good wash to rid the detritus as much as I can and re use it. Thank you for all the great advice!

 

[BestMomEver]

twenty pages of work:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

It’s better to rinse it.

From the thread: at no time will a rinse cause a recycle. Never happens not once, nor the upcoming twenty. If you move the sand without a rinse, you may or may not get a mini cycle. That’s what the whole thread distills down to, variability vs nonvariation. Taking your chances is non rinse, absolute safety is rinsing.

Let’s say you didn’t rinse it and the detritus isn’t so packed as to be a source of rotting ammonia. Then it’s not dangerous, it’s just invader feed in the next system. You are encountering a forced intercept point, to clean the diaper with the last chance it’s likely to get until some external force requires a rinsing again in the future. This resets the age of your sandbed, before it causes enduring cyano problems in the new tank. Moving over detritus never helps, it just never helps.


The number one target in all my GHA threads and cyano threads and skip cycle threads is clouding detritus. You have a chance to manage the number one cause of half a million dollars in invaded tanks and that’s just last year’s threads... compounding detritus is the fundamental cause of most headaches in reefing regarding long term ecosystem stability, you have an intercept opportunity.

Question... I’m setting up a new tank and moving the contents of three smaller tanks into it. I can wash my old sand for the new tank but I am not sure if that will do anything but keep me from having to buy new sand. I’m assuming that when you rinse the sand, not only to you get the detritus out but also any helpful bacteria as well. Other than saving money, is there any benefit to keeping old, washed sand?

 

[brandon429]

that is a valid question, the #1 hesitation to access aquariums revolves around what bacteria do and do not tolerate. that thread above is unique in that no other thread on the internet takes a given claim and applies it to about half a million bucks of other people's money, we have some risk on the line in the repeated works but there's also safety in outcomes when the strict no clouding rule is upheld

end of hesitation is the goal, by knowing our tanks tolerate direct access, no invader can win and take over where we can just access the places they hide and feed.

those sand grains are layered, coarse surface area sand grains. at the microscopic level they're the grand canyon, they're not polished steel which would be easier to rinse scums and bacteria clear

the bac cling to the crevices... imagine sterilizing a hospital work area with just tap water. tap water delivers bacteria, it is not antibacterial.

its suppressive to bacteria, and out of the water plant online reports show pretty clear of bac

but out of the tap, the pipe scum for miles, the faucet o ring not rinsed since 1987

galore contam, even though tap runs through it and nobody supplies it ammonia.

rinsing is too short of dwell time to be antimicrobial, though it will strip off top layers of bac which is good...these bac are in excess of what the live rock provides, sand is treated as the breakpoint in surface area for a tank but its not...that's how we remove sandbeds instantly, no ramp up, in order to make noncompliant invasion tanks bare bottom before we put the rinsed sand back into the controlled tank.

all reef tanks use enough live rock to instantly handle the entire bioload of the tank, without ramp down, since the sandbed bacteria and surface area were just excessive.
I like deep sand beds, Im not against them as it would seem. Im against detritus packed sandbeds...my sandbed is five or six inches but its kept clean, so it functions like a non sandbed in terms of causing me risk or invasions.

100% applicable analogy:

anyone here can hook up five canister filters to their tanks and let them run 60 days. disconnect each filter, run it on a ten gallon tank of 1 ppm ammonia saltwater, it neutralizes it in 24 hours.

the filters self cycled because of being wet, not that you had to add more feed to your tank, or more bioload. you gave them plumbing into a bacterially contaminated system, and time, so a filter resulted which functions independent of the whole when tested


*at any time, you can remove all the filters AND the sandbed from that tank, and the rocks still carry the whole bioloading

to envision why this works repeatedly is to truly understand the boundaries of tank care. why people put up with sixteen months of sustained cyano I find more interesting than the actual invasion.