cc/sand

[hot883]

Originally Posted by PitDawg01
when u say "ice chest." Do u mean like a large cooler?? How much will it cost me to buy all that? I am trying to save up for lights...
Yes, regular ice chest or anything clean like that will/can be used. You will still need to take out ALL the water, EVERYTHIMG in your tank. As soon as you start stirring up that CC you will understand why. Large water change still won't help when you get all that crap floating around.

 

[littlebuck]

This is how i did it: (make sure you prepare your new sand ahead of time by adding water to it in a bucket - this will reduce cloudiness when you add it)
1. purchased a few large rubbermaid containers (double capacity of your tank).
2. prepare new water in half of the containers
3. drain almost all of the water from the tank into the remaining containers (leave only about 2-3" of water in the tank).
4. Remove a few pieces of LR into a container with the old water
5. place powerhead and heater into the same container
6. remove your BTA into the same container
7. Remove all of the LR into the containers with the new water
8. Catch all of the fish and cleanup crew, and place into conainer with the old water and BTA (put some sort of cover on it if you feel your fish are at a risk to jump)
9. remove the remaining water, and scoop out the CC (A dustpan would work the best!)
10. clean out tank (with just a rag and water)
11. Place the first pieces of LR in the tank (the ones that will go directly on the bottom) (you want the LR direclty on the glass bottom of the tank)
12. place sand in tank around LR, and all over the bottom of the tank. (a small cereal bowl works for this)
13. Add the old water back to the tank
14. add the rest of the LR back to the tank
15. allow the sand to settle
16. add all living critters and last pieces of LR to the tank.
Now this is an all day extravaganza, so you should do it on a saturday, or a day that you have off.

 

[littlebuck]

That is from another member that help me out when i did mine. Jdragunas. It helped me out in a big way so i hope it helps all of you.

 

[hot883]

Very good littlebuck, I will add though ENSURE you turn off/unplug heater before removing from tank because it will break. But, thats basically how I did mine. If you use rubbermaid containers, it helps to wrap duct tape around them to help keep them from bulging. I will add, I did a whole thread on this too. There are several done, look for changing over or making the change etc.

 

[littlebuck]

well depending on the size of your tank. i ahve a 29 gallon so i really didnt have much water in each cont. yes make sure you turn off lights and heater.

 

[hot883]

Just a couple of pics. from MY changeover

 

[littlebuck]

awsome pics hot. i really didnt tank any pics of mine besides on the my post. Also i think i mad e abigger mess then you did LOL unless u cleaned it all up. I had water on my carpet stuff everywhere.But you tank looks great. I think the switch was well worth it IMO

 

[hot883]

Originally Posted by Littlebuck
awsome pics hot. i really didnt tank any pics of mine besides on the my post. Also i think i mad e abigger mess then you did LOL unless u cleaned it all up. I had water on my carpet stuff everywhere.But you tank looks great. I think the switch was well worth it IMO
Thanks, but the tank shot here is before the change. Ha! It wasn't to messy

After I cleaned up the first leaky trash can in the pic. See I even taped the crap out of it and didn't even get to fill it up. Ha!
Here's a couple new ones

 

[rev]

I am also going to take the plunge this weekend.I have had the sand for a few weeks,but scared to do it.I figured once the water is out of the tank,I will use the trusty ol' 16 gallon shop vac to suck out the cc.Should take about 10 seconds or so. (I did it with my freshwater tank).
And maybe by Sunday the tank will look good enough to get a couple featherdusters

 

[hot883]

Originally Posted by Rev
I am also going to take the plunge this weekend.I have had the sand for a few weeks,but scared to do it.I figured once the water is out of the tank,I will use the trusty ol' 16 gallon shop vac to suck out the cc.Should take about 10 seconds or so. (I did it with my freshwater tank).
And maybe by Sunday the tank will look good enough to get a couple featherdusters
I will be praying for you.

Naw, not really that bad and REALLY worth it.

 

[littlebuck]

nice pics. is that clown in ur pre filter?

 

[hot883]

Originally Posted by Littlebuck
nice pics. is that clown in ur pre filter?
No, just checking it out.

 

[pitdawg01]

Wow, I am in for an adventure!!!! If only I would have started out with sand....(but thats okay Barry, your rock is going in when I do this)

 

[clamdigger]

is it posible to live with c.c.... and still be happy(extreme clean-up crew maybe?) my girlfriend is scared to death that I'm gonna kill her blue hippo if I make the change!!

 

[littlebuck]

i mean you can but you are going to haev nitrates like crazy in there. Becase no matter how good of a clean up crew they will not dig deep in the cc. Unlike the sand my snails get right donw and cant see them half the time. Its not that hard of a thing to do. But if you dont switch. when you clean you tank you are gonig to need to vacuum out the bottom everytime and when you do thats you will still release nitrates. Trust me its worth it to do the change and its hot that hard. since you are using the same water you will be ok. But when you do it dont mess with the bottom/cc untill everything is out and all the water is pretty much crained because once you move the cc you will under stand why it was a good thing u changed. I hope that you chage i did it this past week and i am very glad i did.

 

[cmiles]

what if you have a lot of corals will i be able to add them back in the same day? will they be okay withiut the lighting fora day? and do i need to get live sand, to keep the tank from cycling? i have been researching as to whether i want to change or not also, this has been a real informative thread.

 

[the monkey]

why do you folks feel the need to do it all at once?
Provided your rock structure is sound - grabbing that wetdry vac and vaccuming out 10% of it at a time is fine.
Replace the water (but don't add the sand yet).
Keep a canister filter on hand just in case.
Do that 10 times and then you'll have a near barebottom. Then slowly add the sand.
It doesn't have to be a complete tank teardown.

 

[turningtim]

I did a half live and half dead sand mix when I changed and didn't see a spike. Also a HOB mech. filter does wonders for the sand storm. I had a big whisper from fresh water days and completed the task in a couple hours on my 50.
Make the change, I waited to long and my CC was a trate trap and almost crashed my tank. It's not easy but more than worth the trouble.
cmiles, it takes a couple days for everything to chill after the change but I didn't lose anything. I mean nobody is happy after all the moving and such but all should just fine.
I guess I did mine all at once b/c I had a trate problem and wanted to clean the entire tank to make sure I got all of the nastiness out but the CC was in there for years. I guess it matters on how long the CC is there and if you feel there's a problem with the tank. Also I would say doing it in one day rather than messing with over and over again was better for me.
Just my 2 cents.
Good Luck!

 

[rev]

Right now I have a cc bed,it's about 3/4' deep.I also do not have alot of rock/corals.I also don't have any nitrate issues,for the simple reason I use a gravel vac once a week to stir it up and suck out any of the junk that's in there.(lot's of snail poop)But I am going to start adding more lr,and corals,and once I do that,I will have a tough time getting the gravel vac in there.That's why I want to do the swap now.

 

[kaholic]

Making this change soon as well. Above with the 16 step process it says to make new water in half the containers. Won't that cause a cycle to occur? I have a 92 gal that I was going to buy 2-50 gal rubbermaid tubs, plus I already have 2-16 gal I use for water changes. If I just make new water in one of the 16 gallon tubs and put the rest of the old water back, should that be ok? :thinking: