Tank Transfer - did you keep or ditch your sand?

[Clueless Reefer]

Good morning everyone! I wanted to run a poll to see how many people kept their sand during a tank upgrade and just wash it so they didn't get a nitrate bomb? I'm having a real tough time with the concept of ditching my sand since its been in there for close to 10 years. I'm fixing to go from my 75 to a 150 towards the end of the year and trying to think everything through.

As a side note - if you kept your sand...any feedback or notes you'd like to share?

 

[OrionN]

You can ditch your sand, or you can wash it.
I washed my sand about 1/2 gal at a time in a 5 gal bucket. I use a garden hose and washed it until the water is clear, stirred it all the way to the bottom all the time. The sand is as good as new but it is a lot of works.

 

[saltyhog]

Sand wasn't expensive enough to stimulate me to wash mine. I do not use "live sand" though and it may cost more (not sure).

 

[norfolkgarden]

Hahahahahahahahahahaha

Plan a *day* for this.


Sorry, let's just call it a strong memory.
[emoji17]


You will be utterly amazed at the amount of filth that you can store in between the grains of sugar sand.

I would never bother doing it again.


As other people have mentioned, you will need to run your garden hose down to the very bottom of the bucket and use a very small amount of sand in the bucket each round and eventually you may still be unsatisfied with the rate of cleanliness.

If you are reefing on an extreme budget, then by all means do it. It's just sweat equity. I have done even sillier stuff just to save some dough.
If you are fortunate enough to have a little cash set aside, just buy more sand.

Good morning everyone! I wanted to run a poll to see how many people kept their sand during a tank upgrade and just wash it so they didn't get a nitrate bomb? I'm having a real tough time with the concept of ditching my sand since its been in there for close to 10 years. I'm fixing to go from my 75 to a 150 towards the end of the year and trying to think everything through.

As a side note - if you kept your sand...any feedback or notes you'd like to share?

 

[OrionN]

In my defense, I was a poor, starving student at the time. "Some day my fish get to eat and I did not"

 

[User1]

I did this back in April. I was upgrading a 40 breeder to a 210 gallon tank. I set up the new tank and ran them in parallel while it was cycling. Once it was finished and I had the time to combine I moved everything over, sifted through the 40 breeders sand for clams I knew I had in there, let it sit over night to clear up, then moved about two cups of sand to the new tank to seed. I had a lot of spaghetti worms I knew and other things but didn't want to move the sand for reasons noted above. I figured two good cups should do the trick and moved them to each side of the tank.

Didn't take long for stuff to move about and now I'm back to a healthy sandbed and worm population. Worked for me anyway, two cups that is.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Ditched it and bought new. The hassle of washing the old stuff vs buying a new bag and calling it a day was an easy pick for me

 

[andrewkw]

If I'm going to commit half a day to washing new sand, which is no picnic I might as well take a whole day and wash the sand I already have. That being said my main display is bare bottom but I do have a few 5g buckets full of sugar sized sand kicking around from the days of my garden eel tank. If I ever do a dsb I will reuse.

 

[ZoWhat]

You know that Party House on your street that all the neighbors despise? Dump your sand on their lawn. Lol!

 

[cracker]

I washed out the sand from a 75 & reused. It does work just wash real real well. Even new sand live or not, gets flushed to remove silt . I feel this silt causes problems down the road.

 

[starypotter]

Outsider here, I didn't even really wash my sand. Then again maybe what I did counted as washing. I used all of my old sand, but because of the new upgrade size I needed a bunch of new sand too. Old sand was white, new was black. I was going for a deep speckled look. So in the tank when it had some water in it I mixed up the sand really well to get the smooth color mixture I wanted. Water was horribly dirty but I rubber banded some filter pads over my powerheads and it cleared up in about a day.
It should be noted there wasn't livestock in there except for a stray snail or two that came in with the sand and rock, and I did have a mini diatom bloom after, but I also used a ton of new rock too so many factors there. If I were to upgrade again when I had proper livestock I'd make sure to rinse my sand a bit better.

 

[AdamNC]

When I upgraded from my 29 to my 40 I bought new. Not because I didn’t trust cleaning the old sand, but I wanted a more corse grain so I could run higher flow.