Worried about the move of the sandbed this Friday!!!

[fish_who?]

I was looking at my tank last night, talking over the past problems with my gf, when I started thinking about my move this weekend. I am moving a 65 to a 125, and to a new house. My sandbed is the worst of my concerns. What is the possibility of me causing more problems than it is worth moving an established sand bed. My sandbed is about a year or so old. I love to see all the life in it, but worry it will cause problems in the new tank. What would you do? Any tips would help. It's my first big move.

 

[dragon0121]

Woooaaaa!!! Rinsing your sand would be like dropping a nuke in there! If you are moving from one tank to another just scoop out the sand with a dustpan type implement, disturbing the sand a little as possible. I've done this in 3 tanks so far and has worked great.

 

[Roach]

I don't mean rinsing with fresh water. He said a rinse with salt water, maybe even tank water, would really get rid of detritous. Is it really a bad idea. I mean yeah you probably are going to lose some critters but it sounded reasonable to me.

 

[dbman]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Roach:
<strong>I don't mean rinsing with fresh water. He said a rinse with salt water, maybe even tank water, would really get rid of detritous. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Get rid of detritous... as well as eggs, copepods, amphipods, small worms, and all the desirable fine sediment in your sand that makes a DSB possible.

You may have a huge nitrate release if you're moving a UGF or plenum setup but a DSB is just a nice simple pile of sand. Keep it simple and it works great. Move the pile of sand. Let it do its thing.

 

[31-2c]

The couple of times I have moved mine, I just scoop it out of the tank and put it in the new one. I have never had any problems.

 

[jaydse]

I've also moved sand beds 3 times never a problem BUT I just bought a friends tank took the sand out put it back it totally blew the tank! it had to cycle all over again. but the sand was really dirty this might of had something to do with it.

 

[afss]

I have moved mine once.. Just scooped and moved. I don't think you would really get a nitrate spike from detrius. After all isn't the point of a DSB to get rid of nitrates in the detrius? So as long as you don't have a die off you aren't going to get a spike, and if you started new you definetly would have instability while it seeded.
IMO anyway
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[Anonymous]

Why does girlfriend get reduced to gf? Let's stop with the over-abbreviating people!!!

Jim

 

[FishHead1]

JM he met his gf at the lfs where he bought his sps and lps. The lfs has VHO and MH which work well if you keep your CA up and your NO3 down.

 

[kervina]

IMHO, thats a bunch of BS.

ROFL!

 

[dbman]

When I moved my sandbed I tried to use something like a dustpan that you can scoop up a section of the sandbed "vertically intact" (you have to have the water OUT of the tank to do this of course - I moved mine with the water drained down right to sand level) and then try to place the sand into the new tank so what was on the bottom stays on the bottom and the top stays on the top. This way you stand less chance of killing the burrowing worms and the aerobic / anaerobic bacteria at least STARTS about where it should be. Whenever I've done this, I always find a little bit of detritus settles on the sand after the move, but I always see fresh worm tunnels on the front glass within the first DAY, so I assume it isn't too traumatic on the sandbed inhabitants. I just transplanted my entire refugium sandbed last weekend and was amazed how much life I'm seeing in there right now - more bristleworms, spaghetti worms, and mini brittle stars than I even knew I had!

 

[kervina]

I've moved a few sand beds and never had a problem. Just scooped the sand into containers of a size I could carry, made sure there was a little water on top of the sand, and moved the stuff. Dumped it into the new tank with no real regard to what was top/bottom before.

Filled the tank, put in the rock, etc., and kept running.

I've never had a problem. I think your sand-dwelling animals are going to be little more hardy than you think. Don't forget, in nature sand is washed around and stirred up all the time, and they manage to survive.

Of course, I try to minimize the amount of time they spend in different temperatures, and get everything back to normal parameters as quickly as possible, but I wouldn't sweat it too much.

But that's just my experience, YMMV.

 

[Roach]

The guy at my LFS was telling me that moving your sand bed can cause all kinds of problems. The worst being that you will get a massive nitrate spike because of the crap you will let loose. I am going to be moving mine from a 37 G to a 92 G this weekend. It's somewhat established having been up for about 16 months. I was thinking of only taking a little of the top and moving it over. The LFS guy also said that you can take the sand and rinse in salt water over a callaneder(sp). THat is supposed to help get rid of some of the crap in it. Hope that helps.

 

[npaden]

Another vote for a successful scoop and move. I put my sand in 2 - 5 gallon buckets and 2 - 32 gallon trash cans. I think the trashcans worked best if you have enough of them. Just make sure you don't overload them! About 6" of sand in the bottom of one is around 75lbs or so!

FWIW, Nathan

 

[dragon0121]

Disturbing a sand bed will result in the death of many of the creatures within it. This will result in a cycle of the tank. The amount of death will dictate the seriousness of the cycle. Those of us who are advocating minimizing the sandbed disturbance are also trying to minimize the cycle. Rinsing the sand would be as large a disturbance as I can imagine. Scooping large sections, each section going all the way to the bottom of the bed, should minimize the disturbance of the layers within the sandbed, thus minimizing the cycle. Treat them like big cake sections and cut them out of the current tank and lay them in the new tank undisturbed.

 

[bgdiving]

since your going to a tank twice as large I wouldn't worry much about how you handled the sand. Just scoop the sand out with as large a scoop as is easy to work with, maintain temp with in reasonable limits during the move. Add your NEW substrate to the new tank add, a little salt water then poor or scoop your old sand on top of the new sand and added the rest of the water the tank shouldn't really have to cycle since you'll be adding your old sand as a starter to the new sand and you'll have a much larger surface area than your old tank and you will just have done a major water change which will dilute out any wastes untill the sand bed is fully established. You should be able to handle your current tank occupants with out any problems but I'd wait a little before adding additional crittters to fill the larger tank. Good luck with your move.

 

[fish_who?]

Thanks for all the replies. I really like coming to this board and seeing people relpying. What seems like a simple task, can sometimes be pushed all out of shape. Thank you all for your help.
Since I am moving from a 65 to a 125, I figured it would be okay, but the new tank will have to cycle a bit. I plan on moving as much of the old water over into the new tank. I have been doing 5-10 gallon water changes and keeping the old water to help out a bit more.
I think I will add the corals and fish later that weekend, just to let the new tank settle a bit. I have a 15 gallon tank I had built to help out with this hopefully this fits most of the animals.

Once again TANKS!!!!


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