Want to change substrate

[Arawk408]

I've started my tank about 4 months ago with Crushed Coral substrate.. how ever I'm not feeling the look no more and want to use that in my sump and use Live Sand in my tank

anything I should worry about if I change it?

 

[brandon429]

no its no harm

drain tank catch clean water for re use

take out rocks take out fish
clean tank out

add in sand that you pre rinsed in tap water for 2 hours until its laser clear. final rinse ro, use this step no matter what sand you use and dont skip this step no matter what sand you use. refill/add back its skip cycle. do NOT buy bottle bac for this job you are cycled and changing sand does not uncycle.

you might consider altering this step, don't. run the pre rinse exactly as listed-any sand you buy, run it.

it is very important to balanced reefing that we dont attach buying bottle bac with every access job, these are not doubted mechanisms at play, we do sandbed swaps by the hundreds in threads.

Bottle bac sellers depend on forum peers to be scared of losing bac, and sell each other on buying more. Show us how it can be done free of buying new bac, it keeps balance in the game.

Your rocks keep all the bacteria the system needs. even if you didnt put sand back in at all it wouldnt harm, we do this in our sand rinse thread to change to bare bottom. we do it all at once, with no bottle bac on the reset.

The only reason people doubt this mechanism and buy bottle bac anyway, just to have insurance, is due to completely false cycle training using rules written by bottle bac sellers. They are held to account here.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

thats fifty pages of tap rinsing on tanks ranging up to $20K sps tanks done all at once. Bottle bac is not used, notice the trending

 

[Arawk408]

I was going to just do a huge water change take out my rock rescape and clean/ add sand

i was just worried i might harm my fish or small amount of corals

but if we are safe It shouldn't be a problem

 

[brandon429]

any customized approach may work, but doesnt come with fifty pages of preview. select actions based on risk assessment

done our way, there is zero risk logged above. jobs recently completed as this week for six years straight

the key to the results above is the tap pre rinse, and not using the clarifier packet included with the sand nor bottle bac. the exact opposite of what a LFS would say on the matter is how we'd proceed.

 

[Arawk408]

Would anything happen if I didn't wash my sand.. cloudy water?

 

[brandon429]

you can see from page 1 in the example thread about ten links for skipped pre rinse. that outcome is mixed in among ones that didnt cloud too bad, it ranges bag to bag. The concern you have over pre rinsing is unfounded though, and comes from no where linked. For example there isn't a thread where 400 people pre rinsed sand, and things went bad. the concern over bacteria loss is a purely made up concept, literally a trick instilled in reefers by bottle bac sellers/bacteria in a bottle purveyors.


there is no downside of rinsing, there's only examples of downsides from not rinsing, even if the next post is a clean tank who didnt pre rinse. That did not help the ones we collected above, their bags required the pre rinse to enjoy the system


you are also rinsing because clouding falsely covers up water clouding caused by cycling, we need your water to be laser clear so that if it goes cloudy we can act correctly. if you follow steps, it wont be cloudy for either reason.

people who skip pre rinse out of fear of bacterial loss that has no threads leave clouding in place that masks the real type of clouding we need to watch out for: ammonia noncontrol. skipping the pre rinse has zero benefit.

in our links is a few tanks who were clear after the setup, then rocks fell or powerhead failed and messed up tank badly, its right there on page one

that mistake in a pre rinsed system has the sand grains falling down clean, like a snowglobe.

when someone posts a clean no rinse build, that's from a tank that didnt have rock slides or a dislodged pump accident. its from a lucky system.

six years of work rarely convinces anyone to get off the fear of bacterial loss train though, the training has been too good to ignore the fear even though the training to fear bacterial loss has not a single thread.

its merely a rumor circulated on forums, with no basis.

Bottle bac sellers who advise on stuck reef cycles should be ready, I'm coming for their bottom line. I will undo their trickery with massive work links. we control the cycle by imparting a cloudless condition, not by dosing or adding something.

that above is the only sand changing thread on the entire internet. (other peoples tanks, not a post of me changing mine)

 

[TimD]

Would anything happen if I didn't wash my sand.. cloudy water?

I did a substrate swap following what Brandon said and I had no problem, rinsing the hell out of the sand is key, just when you think it’s clear enough wash it again.

 

[FMF0331]

It stated ARAWK408 plans on using live sand .... if you're using LIVE SAND, no need to wash

 

[brandon429]

You still wash it. its too cloudy if you don’t, and it’s not live anyway just because the bag says it is. For example, bring handful of sand to eye, notice nothing is wiggling.


bacteria, it’s been tested and found none which also surprised me. The only sand you don’t pre rinse is from KP aquatics, it has wigglers


read the huge thread above to see why we always pre rinse


10 days, still won't settle and clouds fully
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/cloudy-tank.576835/

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bummer-could-use-some-help.558301/

 

[FMF0331]

I didn't wash my bags of live sand, end result was great. Thank you for the input, love this hobby

 

[brandon429]

were you surprised to find out it doesn’t lower ammonia, the bac on the sand from caribsea, I was for sure. They tested it with aquabiomics / dna sampling and then with oxidation testing in test tubes in the chemistry forum


I’d have lost money on that bet, it’s wet from the bag after all. We were rinsing above so that extended clouding doesn’t occur 20% of the time for people, not caring about the bac lost (only live rock bacteria matter in reefing, sandbed bac are always expendable) but after their sampling tests there wasn’t anything to lose by rinsing other than that heinous clouding. Some folks get bags far degraded into silting, some dont agreed


the pre rinse in tap water is how we avoid 20% hating that thread above, 100% like it due to pre rinsing it makes an even playing field for tank moves and substrate swaps and cyano fixes. One of the major reef rules (don’t rinse bacteria off live sand) was totally made up, there wasn’t any viable bac to rinse off / it’s still pretty amazing to me.

 

[brandon429]

A week without power - Recoverable?

So, tank went without power for a week following hurricane Ida. There was no flow(obviously) and temps hit 85-86 during the day. I came back to the city to rescue my 2 clowns who are currently living in a 5 gallon bucket with a bubbler. Basically my question is: what are my options from here...

www.reef2reef.com

For storm recovery, power outages reset we tap water rinse the actual cycled sand from the original tank and put it back, that sand for sure had cycling bacteria but we do this to instate total clarity.


recycle events cause clouding in reef tanks, its a visual warning system of coming loss. By starting the tanks with old sand 100% rinsed there’s nothing to mask the dangerous form of clouding and we can track system health everyday by looking at water clarity vs tedious testing with non seneye ammonia kits.

Being laser clear is the new best way to deal with sand, for the masses even if occasional lone examples don’t need prep. Fully agreed some bags of sand settle out faster than others