Switching from Crushed Coral to Sand.

Well I'm fed up with my crushed coral bed. I can't keep it clean, I have a great clean up crew, hermits, all kinds of snails, gobie, lots of water flow. I think the pieces of CC are just to big to be turned over and moved to free the detrius. (sp?) Bottom line I've done everything and can't keep it white.
So I want to switch to sand. I'm concerned doing this in an established reef tank.
Will it cause a spike just taking the CC out?
Should I put the sand in a rubbermaid with a powerhead for awhile to allow it to get the proper bacteria? Will this keep me from getting a spike when I put it in the tank?
How have you guys done this?
What should I know and how should I go about it?
Maybe Lil Guppy will chime in I remember a thread about her doing it?
The tank is a 120 with 150 pounds of LR. 35 gallon sump.
I was thinking about taking the CC out and adding the sand a small amount at a time.
Thanks in advance!
 

coralreefer

Active Member
ok,
if you CAREFULLY remove the CC sandbed, and introduce sand (live or not, it doesn't matter). most of the nitrifying bacteria live on the rocks and equipment in your tank
 
Originally Posted by coralreefer
http:///forum/post/3023627
ok,
if you CAREFULLY remove the CC sandbed, and introduce sand (live or not, it doesn't matter). most of the nitrifying bacteria live on the rocks and equipment in your tank
Ok thanks.....that's why I'm thinking about just taking out a small amount of CC at a time of the course of a month and then putting a cup of sand in every few days. Does this sound OK? Darn LFS recommended the CC when I set the tank up.
 
N

nihoa

Guest
i did the whole thing in one go on eour 30g and had only a marginal and short lived ammonia spike and a bit of a nitrate spike that a water change handled.
what i did was take all my livestock and put it into one container w/ a heater and powerhead and put all my liverock in a large rubbermaid w/ a heater and powerhead. took quite awhile to gather everyone up. i kept as much water as i could then used an brand new dust pan to scoop all the crushed coral and nasty bottom water out of the tank. there was stuff all over the sides and bottom still so i gave the tank a rinse in the tub (the freshwater took care of the glass coraline!). i then put my largest base pieces of liverock back in the tank, added the sand all around it and through the caves, then very very slowly added the water. i had very little cloudiness cus i went mega slow. i then added the rest of my liverock and landscaped it all. waited maybe 4 or 5 hours after that to really let it settle and then replumbed/wired everything and added the livestock last.
its just important to check your levels like crazy and dont let any nasty spikes creep up on you. if you have lots of liverock and keep as much of you water as you can you will probably be alright.
if you did a little bit at a time are you thinking of not draining the tank?
 
Nihoa....I have thought about taking everything out but there is sooooo much I don't know if I could do it, that makes me really, really nervous. I know I won't be able to get 100% of the CC out without moving the rock but I could get 90% easy.
 
N

nihoa

Guest
i would be a little worried about doing it bit by bit. right now you have anaerobic bacteria deeper in your cc and if you dig down into that to remove a section you will get dieoff. maybe its a negligble issue and wouldnt be a problem. one of the things i found though was that there was considerable build-up of ditritus in our cc and disturbing it put a plume of old crap and food into the water and we would get spikes from it when it decayed. thats why we did ours in one go and kept all that crap out of our water.
but 125g, thats a hell of a job!
 
Yes it would be a big job.......and your last post is exactly what I'm worried about, oh man I don't know which way to go lol. I do vaccuum my CC every other week and I never get a spike though, so do you think if I started taking some out it would cause a spike still?
 
N

nihoa

Guest
i can only speak from my experience in a 30g tank that at the time had no sump. i did some landscaping once where i buried a piece of liverock, that had a hole in it, into the cc to make a little fish bunker and just digging down into a 15cm X 15cm area was enough to give us a bad ammonia spike. so going bit by bit wasnt an option for us. now whether you have a high enough volume of water to buffer the spikes and whether you have as much junk in your cc i cant really say.
if you do go bit by bit a neat trick i heard of was using clear tubing to drop the sand into the tank. rather than dump it out of a cup under water you run the hose down to the bottom of the tank and pour your sand down from the top. then you just lift the tube a little bit here, there and everywhere you want the sand to go.
 
Hey that tubing trick sounds great I will do that when I get to that point.....still not sure how I'm gonna go about it tough.
 

thai

Member
Originally Posted by Nihoa
http:///forum/post/3023681
i did the whole thing in one go on eour 30g and had only a marginal and short lived ammonia spike and a bit of a nitrate spike that a water change handled.
what i did was take all my livestock and put it into one container w/ a heater and powerhead and put all my liverock in a large rubbermaid w/ a heater and powerhead. took quite awhile to gather everyone up. i kept as much water as i could then used an brand new dust pan to scoop all the crushed coral and nasty bottom water out of the tank. there was stuff all over the sides and bottom still so i gave the tank a rinse in the tub (the freshwater took care of the glass coraline!). i then put my largest base pieces of liverock back in the tank, added the sand all around it and through the caves, then very very slowly added the water. i had very little cloudiness cus i went mega slow. i then added the rest of my liverock and landscaped it all. waited maybe 4 or 5 hours after that to really let it settle and then replumbed/wired everything and added the livestock last.
its just important to check your levels like crazy and dont let any nasty spikes creep up on you. if you have lots of liverock and keep as much of you water as you can you will probably be alright.
if you did a little bit at a time are you thinking of not draining the tank?
i did exactly what you have done on my 180 and everything went perfectly well.
 
N

nihoa

Guest
Originally Posted by reefaholic33
http:///forum/post/3024413
Hey that tubing trick sounds great I will do that when I get to that point.....still not sure how I'm gonna go about it tough.
its a neat trick to get the sand in which will prevent cloudiness but doesnt do much for you getting the cc out without releasing all the crap into your water.
 
N

nihoa

Guest
yea sounds better. do you get white powdery stuff float up from the cc if you disturb it? maybe do a little test and see what happens if you try to pull a cup of it up out of the water.
did you read above that thai did what i did with a 180? a lot of work but you will at least have all of it out.
 
No powdery stuff come up when I vaccuum it.....I'm gonna experiment and if I get a spike I will just have to take everything out.
What do you guys think about putting the new sand in a rubbermaid with a powerhead for awhile first.....will this stop it from causing a spike when I add it?
 
N

nihoa

Guest
if you wanted to try and 'prime' it you could put it in a rubbermaid for a bit (no more than a week at most) and throw one of you filter sponges in there to get some bacteria in it. i wouldnt bother though.
as i understand it the spike will come from crap in your cc getting into your water or from your systems inability to process nutrients after losing the filtration in the cc. for your situation, though, you have quite a bit of liverock and your cc bed is shallow anyway and likely isnt providing the bulk of your filtration. so if there isnt tons of detritus entering the water and you have all your biofiltration in the rock you should be good to go.
if you do it bit by bit id remove the cc bit by bit until you get it all out then add all your sand at once. if you remove some cc and add sand you are going to have messy boundaries and i think itll turn into a mess real quick. but maybe someone on here has experience with that and could offer some tips on how to do it efficently. the sand moves around quite a bit at first and dunes according your flow and it may be hard to keep it from mixing with your cc.
what do you have for a clean up crew? any fighting conchs or anything like that? with the switchout you might have to get some algae flakes down onto the substrate so your clean up crew doesnt starve.
 
Originally Posted by Nihoa
http:///forum/post/3024608
if you wanted to try and 'prime' it you could put it in a rubbermaid for a bit (no more than a week at most) and throw one of you filter sponges in there to get some bacteria in it. i wouldnt bother though.
as i understand it the spike will come from crap in your cc getting into your water or from your systems inability to process nutrients after losing the filtration in the cc. for your situation, though, you have quite a bit of liverock and your cc bed is shallow anyway and likely isnt providing the bulk of your filtration. so if there isnt tons of detritus entering the water and you have all your biofiltration in the rock you should be good to go.
if you do it bit by bit id remove the cc bit by bit until you get it all out then add all your sand at once. if you remove some cc and add sand you are going to have messy boundaries and i think itll turn into a mess real quick. but maybe someone on here has experience with that and could offer some tips on how to do it efficently. the sand moves around quite a bit at first and dunes according your flow and it may be hard to keep it from mixing with your cc.
what do you have for a clean up crew? any fighting conchs or anything like that? with the switchout you might have to get some algae flakes down onto the substrate so your clean up crew doesnt starve.
This post I think makes up my mind......I think what I might do is vaccuum the gravel and then take some out and repeat a few days later if I have no spike. And I will take all the CC out and then add the sand all at once through your tube idea. And I have a large CUC mainly hermits, variety of snails......so I will have to substitute some food for them I guess, but no prob there.
I have alot of LR so I have waaaaay more biological filtration in that than I do in my half inch of CC. So it should easily be able to take care of it when I stir stuff up
The other thing that makes me feel safe is that I always vaccuum my CC and I never get any spikes, but I read alot that says you should not disturb it. Does that only apply to sand? Cause if I didn't vaccuum the cc it gets brown even with my huge CUC.
 
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