Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

[merereef]

its simply clean that was a team effort, can you summarize some of the extra measures beyond sandbed surgery it took to wrestle that into compliance?

First removed the sand bed about 90% of the sand removed... rinsed the sand really really well. The dinos then started to grow on the rocks.. i followed the elegence corals method by cruz and the dinos dissapeared on day 3. On day 5 i re added the freshly rinsed sand back in to the aquarium. I spoke with cruz and he told me the method is basically resetting the tank back to the way nature intended i tried everything to fight the dinos nothing worked except his method. I finished the treatment yesterday and happy with the tank now

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Daniel@RTR

Can you let us know the digital ammonia measures you saw when removing sand

When removing sand, did your rocks have enough time to take on new bacteria, or from the measures did testing indicate they were already able to handle the bio loading without the sand?

Hey Brandon, no issues at all. The rock seemed completely capable of handling the bioload. ammonia stayed between 1 and 7 ppb the entire time which is very negligible.

The only thing that I did experience was that while the sand was out of the tank, I had a pretty massive outbreak of cyano. That disappeared almost overnight when I added the sand back. I thought that part was interesting.

 

[brandon429]

Thanks tons these feedback patterns are our bread and butter. we're subbing sheer repeating volume for typical hard data cuz a collection of titration color interpretations isn't ideal for us/causes hesitation


but I enjoyed how you were using the rare digital ammonia assessment for truly accurate tracking about how rocks take over biofiltration instantly, if needed. Thank you for the work!
b429

-When removing a sandbed, rocks dont need time to take on more bac. this literally shatters a longstanding notion in our hobby. the takeaway is we can save money on bottle bac (not used here) and we can reliably access sand all at once, not in portions, to avoid upwelling/recycle events based on bacterial ramp up not being required as it was once thought to be

Live rock is often a supercoil of surface area. The thinnest possible scum/biofilm layer covering all surfaces is vastly beyond what your tank actually requires as active surface area, which is why when removing sandbeds we dont need a ramp up.

you could halve your total rock load, rip out all the sand, and it still measures the same even if you dont reduce fish ~~~
now that claim doesnt sound so loco...live rock has that much spare surface area.

The key is not modulating bacteria, its about the surface area. if we've kept em wet longer than 30 days, the bacteria are doing their thing regardless of what we offer or withhold.

 

[merereef]

So after the sand rinse... what is the maintenence procedure recommended in keeping the sand bed super white and clean?

 

[brandon429]

Our friend Blusop has this thread called my white sand method, and it's twenty pages of large tankers who routinely stick- stir their clean beds. They're purposely kicking up very light detritus into the tank as marine snow feed and it prevents sinking into the bed down low. Filters remove it before detritus sinks into the bed
They're preventative dowlers ha nice

No more rip cleans with the white sand method!

 

[MBX5]

I have only skimmed this thread but I’m looking to replace all of the sand in my 100gal reef with larger grain. Am I reading right that I could siphon all of the sand at once or should I do it over months? I’m also working on crazy bubble cyno outbreak that happened while I was gone for few months.
Pic for reference

 

[brandon429]

Agree its a ton of reading thank you for posting!

we can redo the entire tank at once without a recycle. What we've demo'd and discovered here is that live rock bacteria remain after our live rocks are cleaned externally (in saltwater, preserving their bacteria but nonetheless using knives etc to debride off attached algae, roughly, then rinse w sw)

we can remove/replace/rinse/upgrade the sand (doesnt matter the action) because the bacteria in sand isn't needed when the original live rock # is preserved and kept in the new assembled tank.

we have shown that there is a marked risk for causing a cycle/mini cycle but its 100% controllable if we keep detritus from being moved over into the new tank. knowing these updated rules about filter bacteria and active surface area specifically mean you can clean your entire tank all at once, restart it clean, and you will not lose the tank to a recycle.
pls take pics for us if you can
I would recommend something like:

drain most of the tank water and be catching fish on the way down, hold in that water. dont stir up things while removing it, remove clean tank water.

finish up disassembly and take out rocks hold in sep container of tank water.

corals in another if possible, if can be separated. if not, keep them with the rock.

clean the whole system and choose new sand. per the thread, rinse new sand in tap until it runs totally clear, then saltwater and its ready.

clean your rocks off by knife, then rinsing in saltwater, dislodge all the algae. use peroxide on the cleaned spots after you scraped and saltwater rinsed them, this kills valonia bits and pieces.

work around coralline, dont kill or apply to that critical zone we want to grow.

swish your rocks around in saltwater after you clean them, to cast off a bunch of stored up waste.

re assemble a perfect clean tank using these cleaned portions, and all new water. re acclimate animals. if you lose a fish/price of sandbedding but its rare we hardly ever do.

run lights on 50% for a week or more, ramp up as we wrote on page 1

 

[Scorpius]

I know people love sand etc., but bare bottoms long term are the way to go, unless you have a lot of time to fiddle with sand maintenance.

 

[brandon429]

it takes 30 pages of study to be able to deal w these landmines heh

 

[MBX5]

Thanks! I may hold off until I treat with Vibrant for a few months. I’m actually on the fence about sand. 18+ years of tanks I’ve always had it. I’m out of town so much it’s hard to keep it clean. I’m just worried my wrasse won’t find a place to sleep.

 

[Scorpius]

Thanks! I may hold off until I treat with Vibrant for a few months. I’m actually on the fence about sand. 18+ years of tanks I’ve always had it. I’m out of town so much it’s hard to keep it clean. I’m just worried my wrasse won’t find a place to sleep.

My yellow coris wrasse has been ok for the past month of bare bottom. I wouldn't says it's ideal, but it's working none the less.

 

[brandon429]

additionally, the whole replacement can be done in hours/same day on most tanks. Its a one day turnaround blast rinsing, just like how they set up new tanks at MACNA conventions by moving over clean live rock and sand.

 

[CoralClasher]

Four months ago I added a well rinsed one inch crushed coral bed with live sand activator and have been stirring daily. The bed filled with detritus very quickly and the spaghetti worms population has exploded. Should I be siphoning the sand? I’m worried about losing to many worms.

 

[brandon429]

I'm 100% certain both approaches (keeping waste or cleaning sand) have successful reefs. Old schoolers rarely touched or cleaned beds directly and they hate when we advocate blast cleaning a bed thoroughly.

The reason I advocate removing that potential either in portions or all at once is because that waste fuels most known tank invasions. If one doesn't hitchhike in, then there's nothing for it to fuel. Mostly GHA and cyano feed on that cloud eventually

Other times the bed must be rinsed is during a move, we can see the only safe way to relocate or upgrade a reef is by not dealing with detritus. If a reef is able to sit there totally undisturbed then detritus up under won't matter.


For anyone dosing nitrate lowering items like nopox, to have a sandbed full of that detritus pictured above is fully counterproductive, that's going to degrade into nitrate. It is the source of nitrate along with food added and bioload outputs. Systems wanting to control measures for nitrate and phosphate often don't want large stores of it up under the coral.

For anyone planning the most safe tank for power outage prone regions, a clean sandbed or no sandbed lasts longer than an oxygen consuming waste zone which competes with fish for critical o2, after seeing BOD samples in a lab of varying amounts of sludge vs clean water I'll vote the sandbed is more oxygen command than the entire fish bioload for any measured interval. With no power outages, or outages that resume before loss event, the mass mix of bacteria in a sandbed aren't a big deal.

I've come to see bed rinsing as necessary in some moves and preferential in others but not required. Most of us began reefing with a hands off bed. We arrived much later on at the sand rinse thread. Something drives participation here beyond just offending old timers: we want to be able to move, upgrade, relocate and fix invasions in sandbeds without killing our tanks. That cloud alone shown above is the cause for our sand rinse threads, clean grains never harmed anyone's reef.

I think the overall storage of waste needs to be specifically designed into a tank vs just set one up that stores waste and see what will happen, we show here that to run clean bed is no harm. The mess isn't required for sandbed success, hands on cleaning is safe if someone wants the characters that a cloudless bed confers.

Nobody here showed up for cyano work with a bare bottom low detritus tank I'm noticing in patterns

 

[CoralClasher]

I’ve never had a bad outbreak of Cyano but Dino almost got the best of me. I’m about three months past the last Dino bloom. And now I’m fighting Ich or velvet so I’m Fishless for 60 more days. I’m wondering if this would be the time for action?

 

[brandon429]

Not sure about disease aspect, but I've read in Humblefishs threads about sandbeds/dirty ones insulating pathogens against medication, they play some role in harboring offenders lol let's burn that sandbed back to clean. How hard is it to rip clean that system all at once/ # gallons

 

[CoralClasher]

150 gallons total water. 120 gallon DT 55 gallon deep sand bed refuge. I’ve got plenty of time and pulling the rocks is nothing new for me.

 

[CoralClasher]

The refugium is about a year old and is looking great. I’ve never touched the sand and probably shouldn’t mess with it too much?

 

[CoralClasher]

So rip clean the DT by draining and saving clean tank water, shop vacuum all the sand and rinse with tap water and RODI? Do I save some un rinsed sand for seeding? Should this work be done with lights off and a ramp up for a week?

 

[brandon429]

Yes agreed that's a great summary pls document that surgery for us

No seeding is required

If you were to take rinsed sand and then sprinkle it on sterilized agar media in a lab setting and incubate it for 48 hours, several strains of bac will appear based on agar allowances and other factors, we are never sterilizing sand by rinsing it well. Agreed too on refugium bed no need to disturb it's not invaded and at that age could be reducing nitrate for you, harmless to leave as is.

Removing the front sand cloud ability is removing waste and invasion fuel before any events. I don't think front sand looks horrible we just like to use and document repeating steps to allow access if someone wants to do so. I wouldn't leave a shred unrinsed up front. We've maintained no recycle risk by being thorough, live rock always handles the job w or wo sand. That's easy to state sitting on my chair with no huge job in front of me but really that enduring refugium is orders and orders of nitrifiers spread around actively to the tank. We have been ripping out front sandbeds altogether with no lead up, you are preserving your live rock plus the goodies from the refugium are all extras. Cleaning the sand is preventative maintenance and not harmful. I clean mine before events as well, after a few more mos of storage I'll be rip cleaning my tank too then it will go another two years between flushing