Switching from crushed coral to live sand

[parrothead]

First in my tank I have a cleaner shrimp, one pink anthias, an eibli anglefish, a yellow tang, a rock-skipper blenny, and two fire-fish gobies, along with brown star polyps and colt coral. My question is it simple enough that I could remove most of my existing water and live rock (80 pounds)into 5-gallon buckets, quickly replace the crushed coral with sand, leave some crushed coral in to seed the sand, and add the water, live rock, and fish/inverts back in right away with no harm, or will the tank have to be cycled again? Also, by the way, the tank is a 55 gallon and has been up and running for about a year and a half. Another question is, I am assuming an udergravel filter should not be used, so are there any precations that should be taken to keep sand out of powerhead impellers?

 

[kris]

You can do this-and it is a good idea- you will need to put your fish in a quarantine tank though. You won't need to save your water though, your filter media and live rock is what will keep you from having to recycle. Before you put the fish back in though acclimate them as though they were new fish. I don't reccomend using a ug with sand. It isn't neccessary and because sand obviously won't stay on top of the filter it defeats the purpose of the filter.

 

[chuck]

First off don't even think of an undergravel filter. They are no good in reef tanks in my opinion. Second you sand probably has become live after being run for over a year. There is a bunch of hype over live sand, but by having live rock on top of crushed coral for a while organisms from the live rock will have burrowed down in you crushed coral and caused it to become live. When I converted from a f/o tank to a reef tank I removed some pain in the butt silica sand and replaced it with finely crused coral. Since October I have seen a ton of organisms burrowing through and on top of the sand. This will happen naturally as long as you have good live rock in you tank. Good Luck!

 

[halide]

I agree with chuck about the hype about live sand.I set my anenome tank up about a year ago with dead agronite sand and coral sand mix and it is now full of worms and tiny brittle stars.The only thing I would worry about is the depth in my fifty five I have around 3inchs but the reason I say this is I had two but had problems with algae growing on it after adding one more inch it stoped. goodluck

 

[tattooedlife]

I must have missed something here. I've never heard of adding more substrate to the tank to cut out algea growth. How does this work?
Originally posted by Halide:
I agree with chuck about the hype about live sand.I set my anenome tank up about a year ago with dead agronite sand and coral sand mix and it is now full of worms and tiny brittle stars.The only thing I would worry about is the depth in my fifty five I have around 3inchs but the reason I say this is I had two but had problems with algae growing on it after adding one more inch it stoped. goodluck

[This message has been edited by Tattooedlife (edited 04-03-2000).]

 

[kris]

I'm with you tattoedlife--I am unaware of extra substrata being a solution to an algae problem -but hey- whatever works.

 

[halide]

Well I gess I need to explain myself better as far as adding the extra sand to stop my algae problem I really can't explain why it stoped the algae but from posts and from articals I have read theres a fine line between haveing to little or to much sand and I am by no means a authority on live sand beds but I have seen many tanks set up with a plenium with dead sand and those setup with live sand and could see no real difference except both had quality live rock and not to mention tanks setup without a plenium doing great so thats what I meant about the hype theres so many different ways that work live sand or not.

 

[chuck]

It's true I put down a thin layer of sand (not live) approx. an inch or inch & a half. The sand stays clean all the time, it's spotless and there are a ton of organisms crawling throughout the bed. I didn't start seeing results until my 110 gallon tank was at full capacity with 175 lbs of live rock. I myself have never seen good quality "live sand" that can arrive at your door in good condition. On live rock a vast majority of organisms die off during curing, it seems that it would be a lot harder to keep the organisms alive during the curing process of live sand. And I don't believe in rock that arrives at your door already cured for your tank, it's just to risky to think that if you're a serious reef keeper.