CC to dsb without emptying everything?

[dboy999]

was wandering, i got mislead when i first bought my tank 3 months ago bought 40lbs of cc(argonite)which i thought was regular sand thats crushed coral correct?an 40lbs of live sand..having major alage an debris all over the cc driving me nuts....now to the question...about 3 weeks ago did a little water change an sucked the top 1/4 inch of cc alage an debris so on but stopped cause it was sucking up too much of the cc......Would i be able to leave everything in place in my tank,live rock, fish, inverts coral, so on ? an run my siphon an suck up all the cc, comes up very easy an i belive id have no problem sucking it all out with out sucking up no more then 25% of water in the process...reason being i have 100 lbs of live rock an really dont wanna break it totaly down an so on figured id suck it all up i relize there is a thin layer of cc that will still be under live rock an may be some behind live rock...im sure im going to hear about stressing the fish inverts an so on but i think trying to catch them an stick them in a 50 gallon unused trash can with all the rock an everything will be just the same amount of stress.Wanna gonna add about 80-100lbs of live sand..Just afraid this may cause tank to recycle an dont want to lose any fish or anything..well maybe the original damsel that i stared the cycle with(just kidding relax).Also any opinions on getting the live sand in the most peacfully way without too much clouding...any opinions will help..heres some tank specs
1 yellow tail damsel
1coral beauty
1scooter blennie
1blue tang
1 cleaner shrimp
1 coral banded
1peppermint
20 blues leg hermits
5 redleg hermit
15 forget the name small snail sifts in sand
10 turbo's
1 lettuce nudi
1 giant everygrowing bubble coral
1 hammer
1 very small frogspawn
1 leather finger
1 open brain
1 shavingbrush plant
75g.fluval404canister,440w vho's,skimmer,4 powerheads ,ro unit

 

[dboy999]

now that iam researching looking like the argonite was the live sand i bought not the dead...but iam assuming the "dead" sand was cc just much bigger granulars than any sand i see at lfs an so on ..an can see the smaller granulars of the live sand settled below the cc..anyone ever try this idea of removing cc without removing anything?

 

[aarone]

CC is small crushed shells. Not really sand. If you can get the substrate out with out disturbing everything, go for it. But you might run into some problems. When the cc that the LR is resting on is gone, the rock structure will become unstable. Putting the LS in the tank with all the LR, you are bound to cover them in dust.
I would say just switch it out the old fashioned way. To minimize the chance of a small cycle, use more dead sand than LS and wait for it all to liven up. A good way to put the sand in is to wet it down, then run it down a long PVC tube into the bottom of the tank.
Good luck HTH

 

[dboy999]

thanks aarone ...anyone else try this ever?...not worried about covering rock with the sand pretty much all rock lines the back wall of tank...mostly worried about it cycling again an killing everything

 

[ackermsb]

You basically have two options:
1) Take out all LR and put in containers. Take out livestock (if necessary and put in QT. Change out sand. Where does your siphon attached to. Hopefully not a sink cause you will clog the heck out of it if you try to suck up all the cc. When I did it I used a dustpan (a clean one of course) and it worked like a charm.
2) Another option would be to do 1/3 - 1/2 of the tank at a time. You could move all the rock to one side of the tank, pick up the cc and replace it with sand. Wait a week, then do the other side. This way, nothing has to come out of the tank and you dont have a huge cycle. This sure beats taking everything out.
Good luck and keep us posted.