another cycle period?

serpentine5

Member
Ok, I just tore down my 55, placed all my livestock and three pieces of LR in a 10g. I pumped water from the 55 into the 10, and have one of my filters on the 10 as well. I placed all my LR in a large tote and pumped the remainder of the water into the tote. I removes all the sand and placed it in a tote of its own. I moved the 55 to a new location, placed 100 pounds of Yardright in the bottom of the 55, put my old LS on top of the yardright. Then placed a large garbage bag over the sand and pumped the water out of the tote with the LR back into the 55. I then moved the LR into the tank after removing the garbage bag, and topped it off with new water I had prepaired earlier. Looks great with the additional sand, and in its new place.
Now, what do I do now. Should I expect a new cycle period? And if so, how long would it last? If no cycle, I would need to aclimate all my livestock to the 55 right? Anything else I should know or expect?
 

nm reef

Active Member

If I'm following you correctly you've seriously disrupted a exsiting DSB(or sand bed) and put that same sand on top of new sand. The disruption of the existing sand bed can trigger a mini cycle and I'd closely monitor the system prior to adding livestock that would be affected. I wouldn't think the cycle would be very major...but I'd definitely let things settle and keep an eye on ammonia/nitrite just to be safe.
 
T

thomas712

Guest
Thats a tuffy. I don't think that there is any pat answer here. Since every tank an situation is different you could wind up with a mini cycle to something larger, not like a full blown cycle but you could see some spikes, these should not last long.
Did your tank wind up cloudy? or did the old sand keep that down to a minimum. How much older sand did you have?
Thomas
 

serpentine5

Member
Thomas,
If memory serves me correctly, it was about 50 pounds. It was not cloudy until I got in and stired up the edges where I saw air bubbles trapped in the original sand. It has been about 3 hours and I can see through the tank, it is still abit hazy, but it should be crystal clear by noon (its 8 am here now).
 

eng50

Member
I'm glad all has gone well so far! I am about to do the same with my 75g, we are moving and I would like some advice on the process. You did everything I was thinking of doing except the sand bed idea, I have about a 2" bed of well established sand and I was just going to move the tank with the sand in place and moist. What do you all think of that? I have had excellent results with my tank thus far and would like to keep it that way! By the way, the corraline algea will die on the glass correct? So do I scrape it prior to resetup or will new corraline grow over the old fairly well? thanks!!
Bill
 

eng50

Member
By the way, I would love to add more sand if this is a good time to do it, but could only afford the play sand option at this time...better to leave it alone or do as serpentine did? I would think adding it on top would create a problem, better to put it under the old like he did?
Bill
 
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thomas712

Guest

Originally posted by eng50
By the way, I would love to add more sand if this is a good time to do it, but could only afford the play sand option at this time...better to leave it alone or do as serpentine did? I would think adding it on top would create a problem, better to put it under the old like he did?
Bill

Good questions. We talk about adding dry sand to start a tank and placing the live bags of sand in on top of it to help seed it and to keep the cloudiness down. So why not be able to take a top layer of sand from an existing tank when you are going to do a major overhaul?
As a rule here we should never desturb an existing sandbed, and the deeper it is the more problems could occur.
So to me the questions would be given the depth of an existing sandbed what would an appropriate depth of sand to "skim off" so to speak, can be acceptable and not foul the water with nutrients and anoxic bacteria areas that may cause unwanted harm in order to use for reseeding a new sandbed whether it be to move the tank or for other reasons.
If the bags of livesand that we use are good for up to what? a year on the shelves. Then why couldn't we say skimm off a 1/2 inch of our sandbeds, seal it in zip lock bags and use it later? Of course dealing with an enclosed system like we do this will cause some harm to the sandbed, can release unwanted nutrients into the system, and we could find ourselfs battling algae problems, one would have to proceed carfully here. The existing sandbed would have to recover from this.
With the risks involved I would think that using the top 1/2 inch to 1 inch of an existing sand bed would be acceptable to use and discard the rest to prevent a nutrient explosion and to also prevent the anerobic bacteria from releasing into the system. This will seriously desturb the infauna that resides in the top layer of the existing sandbed so I would also think that you would have to use this sand quickly if you want that infauna to survive.
I'm rambling. In your case adding sand should not be a problem if your not moving the tank like he did.
Just add about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of sand at a time to your tank per week, this will allow the worms and pods and other infauna to reinhabit the new top layer of the sand bed. Repeat until the desired depth is obtained.
Thomas
 

eng50

Member
I'm sorry, I didn't add that..I am moving the tank, apx 30 miles away, to a new house, but thank you for the advice, sounds like it is a toss up as I only have about 2" of sandbed currently!
Any further input will be appreciated!!
Thank you
Bill
 
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