adding sand to established tank

[allykahn]

OK. My tank has been up for over 2 years. I have my southdown and I am ready to convert over from cc. What is the best way to add sand without getting cloudy water. I don't have an extra tank to house my fish. I think that I will add about 15-20% sand at a time, in order to be on the safe side. Any suggestions?

[Bughead]

This is something I did several months ago. I increased the sandbed from 2" to 4-5" in the 100 gal tank. I "divided" the tank into thirds, adding a little less than 1/2" sand to a third of the tank every 3 or 4 nights. The reason I added new sand in the evening is because it makes the whole tank look like skim milk, but it's perfectly clear by morning. I left all the livestock in with no problems. The fish didn't even seem particularily stressed. The whole process is a pain in the a$$, but totally worth the effort.

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If it's broke, don't fix it---hide it.

[Elmo18]

Im my opinion, there is no way of getting around NOT getting cloudy water. However, I have found that using a filter floss (liek the ones in the Eclipse systems) with carbon should help clearing up the cloudy water. I would think the best way would be to take out all the livestock, put them in holding tanks/containers, then switch the cc to southdown all at once. I'm not sure if this will kill all the great bacteria and amphipods.

Regards,
Ilham

[allykahn]

thanks for the help. I think that I will start adding the sand this weekend.

[killian]

We recently changed our cc to a sandbed. Took out all the rock and livestock and out 50% of water. Put everything in a HUGE ice chest and used a cat liter scooper to remove the cc but leave the good bacteria. Rinsed the sand and put in tank. We have another tank so we put our fish in it and put the live rock back in the tank with the sand. It was cloudy for the rest of the day but by the next day it was much better. Put the fish back in and everything did fine. Good luck with your project.

[brown trout]

Easy and fast way to do this is get a piece of pvc pipe and slide the sand down that. This eliminates the cloudy water and that nasty headache that's associated with this process. Hope all went well.

[Bughead]

Wow, Brown Trout!!
What a great idea, shooting the sand down PVC pipe! Wish I'd thought of that last January.

[brown trout]

It's all about trial and error. I can't tell you how many times I did it the hard way. It takes us stubborn people a while to learn sometimes!!!

[G]

good idea Brown trout! Your already contributing in the short time you've been here! I think I'll try your method myself!

Gary

[allykahn]

Thanks for the suggestions. I started last weekend, and I must say it was a pain in the butt. I only put sand in about half of the tank. I wasn't sure about yanking all the cc out in one shot and causing problems in the tank. I'll finish this weekend. The sand makes a 100% difference. It also makes the tank appear brighter. A few notes:
1. This is not a project to do by yourself if you have a large tank.
2. I put the sand in at night so that I don't have to look at milky water. Clear water by morning.
3. No matter what you do, you will get cloudy water.

[julesjt]

I am also looking into adding sand to my tank. I will try the PVC Pipe way. I cant remove my rock because the stack job is something I do not want to mess with. Anyone see issues just adding sand around the rock?

[julesjt]

One more question, should I use live sand my tank is only 2 months old. And if so where do you suggest is a good source of live sand?

[Parrothead]

All you need as far as the sand goes is plain aragonite, most lfs stores carry it, the bagged live sand is not really live, trust me on that, just get plain aragonite, save the money for something else, If you want see if you can get a cup or 2 of live sand from a fellow hobbyist or your lfs. Hope this helps, and there shouldn't be any issues with adding the sand at this point

[cagey]

dump the sand in a five gallon bucket. save the bag. fill the bucket, top off, with salt water and stir the sand to rinse. empty water from bucket. refill bag with sand. lower bag into the tank down to bottom. pour sand out from bag while moving bar to spread out. works for me.

[julesjt]

I am getting what looks to be good live sand from Live Sand and Aquarium Live Sand

Do you think I should still do the rinse process.

[Parrothead]

If you are going to get live sand from them, find out where they are shipping it from, if its florida, you are looking at 3 days min. to ship it ground(their free shipping method), you are going to have a lot of die off in that sand in that time period, resulting in a mini cycle at best in your 2 month old tank, what do you have in there for live stock at present.

Also if this is true live sand directly from the ocean, I would not recommend rinising it.

Leebca will have a better idea of what you are up against, and I'd listen to him, he's very, very good at this hobby

[julesjt]

Well here is a video of my tank,
YouTube - Jules - My First Reef Tank 1.5 Months In.

I have 5 fish, and a few coral.

I am using actinic and MH 175W 10k

My sump is a bioball, big skimmer, and phospate reactor. The system is doing very well and my cal, KH, PH, and Nitrates are at great levels.

I want to add some depth to my sand for a few reasons. I do not want to take out my rock and life because I would hate to go through that again. So I was going to add a 20lb bag of live sand and give a little more depth in front and around the base rock. I dont want to F up what I have now because everything is going well but I know in the future deeper sand will help.

I like the PVC pipe idea to pour the sand and I would like to not have to rinse the live sand and lose some of the microbes.

Again I am new but learning and reading as much as I can.

[Parrothead]

jules,

If you have an active sand bed already, just add some plain old aragonite like I mentioned before, with you having a live sand bed already in place, that bag you add, will quickly become live sand as well, and I don't believe that there would be any adverse affects to doing it this way. and you do not need to rinse the aragonite sand either, just use your pvc and slowly add it where you want it.

[julesjt]

Parrothead,

I just wanted to make sure I have the proper microbial life since I only added 1 bag of I am sure cheap live sand. You think that my sand already is doing its thing and I dont need to add more live sand? Also I would like to have more marine bugs like the proper worms and etc, because I started off with mostly dead rock and I dont have much of the marine bugs and worms in my tank. In the begging I had a nightmare of a time and ran into the bad Green Hair Algae issue when I only had a refugium. I admit I screwed up, but now got my tank kicking butt with what is in there now. I can say my Star Polyps and Mushrooms grew already while being in my tank. So when i upgraded to a nice skimmer and phospate reactor and did 3 water changes within 5 week period to get things stable I dont want to screw things up adding sand.

So if you folks agree that I should have the proper bacteria and etc by now and adding plain aragonite sand is the best route, I am all for it.

I am in this for the long haul and will continue to try and do the right thing.

Here is another video if anyone is interested of my green hair aglae nightmare and fix I implemented.

YouTube - My Green Algae Problem by Jules - Reef Tank Issues

[Parrothead]

Just do the aragonite, you can actually order the worms and bugs from several different places, I can think of them right off the top of my head, but for now just get the arag. sand and put it in, I will set a task for myself for this weekend to dig up the contacts for above mentioned dudes.

Also, Welcome to Reeflands, please forgive my manners for not doing that earlier