Crushed Coral over to live sand

liquidonyx

Member
I have a three year old tank with crushed coral and my nitrates are off the charts. i do a 10 gallon water change weekly and clean my skimmer regularly. I read in the archives where someone drained all the water out of their tank saved it, pulled out the cc and replaced it with sand. I believe the sand was straight out of the bag. Then they just replaced all the water. I do have quite a large amount of live rock in my tank though I can't remember how many pounds. My tank is also FOWLR and was looking for some opinions on this topic. Will my fish survive or will my tank cycle again is I use sand with on bacteria?
Thanks,
Aaron
 

darth tang

Active Member
Do you vacuum your coral? I know not the question asked...........but looking for the source of your off the chart nitrates.
 

darth tang

Active Member
To answer your question you may have a mini cycle but as long as you keep doing water changes when needed....it should be fine after a couple weeks.
 

liquidonyx

Member
yes I do vacuum the the cc i even syphon off the tops of the rocks. i even started cutting back on my feeding. but the levels aren't dropping at all. I read that CC can trap the nitrates and keep the levels higher even with the water changes and reduced feeding.
 
Just did the change from cc to sand and I am going thru a high nitrate problem right now, so far the only thing I think I'm going to maybe lose is my Nepthea the rest of my corals, inverts and yes my fish seem to be weathering it okay. Denfinately keep up with the water changes and do not clean anything ie filter, glass, skimmer etc. until tank is regulated again.
 

smbuddy46

Member
what i did was took out a bunch of my cc and have about maybe a one half to 1 inch thickness. this way i can syphone off the waist easier and there isn't as much depth for the waist to get trapped in. just a thought
 
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