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blizzardscout2

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blizzardscout2

Hello,

 

I am slowly removing all of my substrate. It has been up and running for 7 years and I have plenty of rock. Should I be concerned about anything? Again I am not disturbing the substrate much, just siphoning out a small amount every WC.

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There are a few things to look out for depending on how your sandbed was and the maintenance you were doing. If you're running a deep sand bed then you risk releasing pockets of gas that could nuke your tank. Assuming you have been running a shallow sandbed and regularly moving the sand around you shouldn't have this issue. One thing I would definitely be concerned about is the stability of your rock structure. If you originally set your rocks on top of the sand then you could destabilize the structure and have rocks and corals come crashing down. Small bits at a time are probably your best bet for shallow sand beds since you would be limiting how much detritus and gunk is getting released into the water column.

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Even with what was just said, I think you are good to go as long as it is slow. Deep sand will have anaerobic spots but if you remove shallow asand slowly they will become aerobic and can be a=safeky removed. Slow is the name of the game here.

Happy Reefing!

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blizzardscout2

Thanks everyone, I did my WC today and removed some more. Going slow is no big deal as there is no hurry, and hurrying leads to bad results in my experience.

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I removed my sand bed in 6 hours, drained the whole tank, removed the rock, removed the sand, rinsed all the sand off the rock and filled it back up. Didn't lose anything.

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  • 3 weeks later...
wow.such.chris

I just dipped into my shallow sand bed after not siphoning it for months and have started a cyano bloom... can't say for sure thats what did itbut I think I brought a lot of settled matter into the water column

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I removed my sand bed in 6 hours, drained the whole tank, removed the rock, removed the sand, rinsed all the sand off the rock and filled it back up. Didn't lose anything.

+1

 

Did this, even gave the tank a good scrubbing, didn't lose a thing.

 

The sand once removed, was chocked full of nastiness.....

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  • 2 months later...

I siphoned mine out in 3 or 4 WCs. It stimulated a small dino bloom which has been hanging on but I think I have it about beat. Tanks with sand in them look like a damn litterbox.

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cowabunga-reefer

Removing my sandbed recently saved my tank. I had this ultra fine sand that looked great at first but was unable to ever be cleaned really. After a couple huge cyno breakouts and things rapidly dying i yanked it all out. I started slow like you but after a month things weren't going fast enough so took the rest out in one big several hour effort. The sand smelled like dead bodies, so gross. Like VW said be careful with your rock structures. Mine fell and really scratched the glass up in several areas. I thought I'd lose pretty much all of my CUC in the process but sifting through my sand several times after I removed it I'm pretty sure I got all of them. After several weeks, my tank looks beautiful and all of the coral is making a strong comeback! Good luck!

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