total sand replacement?

[RussianBoy]

tank set up with someone else over a year, now that I have it and been working on it I can not get the nitrates to go below 40ppm, i have done damn near everything including all the filter mods, what I fear is the sand that is in the tank is too saturated with waste to even reasonably vacuum, and wanted opinions on keeping my good water and rock and everything that is established and just remove all the sand and replace it. If I do this do I need live sand? I heard it's pointless and just use argonite sand stuff and put my rock and same water in with a 20% change at the same time and keep my eye on the levels... I need some experts opinions.....

[gabe_j]

if your gonna take you sand out i woul take it easy a cup or two at a time tops. use either a siphon hose and suck the sand out (no, not the kind to vaccum a tank just the hose) and dont bother replacing it right away. if you have extra LR to toss in thats already cured then that wouldn't hurt. once you have emptied all of the sand over the course of several weeks or more then add the new sand back in at a cup or two at a time till you get it all replaced. just curious but how much sand is in there?

[Weetabix7]

I don't intend to stir up controversy here or anything, but I've never understood the idea of replacing sand gradually in this specific kind of situation.

The specific issue here is that the OP is concerned that there is a really bad buildup of waste and nutrients in the sandbed.

If this is truly the case, stirring up the sandbed is going to release waste and toxins into the water, and every time they remove a cup or two of sand this is what will happen.

I am actually in the midst of dealing with this exact issue right now, i.e. I believe my sandbed has turned into a nutrient sink that has been polluting the tank.

I already tried adding some pretty good sand stirrers but saw no improvement, so I decided to remove the sand and go bare bottom.

I really feel that the only safe way to remove the sandbed in these circumstances is to first remove all livestock and most or all of the water to another temporary holding container before removing and/or replacing the old sandbed.

I currently have all of my livestock in a 20L on my kitchen counter waiting for me to remove the sand from the old tank.

I'm not trying to push barebottom tanks at all, just saying that I think it's wiser to take livestock and most of the water before replacing an old, nutrient laden sandbed.

[spanko]

Agree with weetie here. Take out all the water, then the livestock and rock. then remove all of the sand. If going with new sandbed get dry sand, not the live stuff. Rinse the sand well, put the rock back in the tank then the sand then the water and critters.

[gabe_j]

lol, well thats what i wound up doing but it was just an emergency in my case. filter malfunction. my train of thought was go slow so you give your system time to keep up and not stress out the critters from the in and out of the tank. but you also have an extremely valid point since he's already got too many nutrients in the sand anyways might aswell take all of it out. so yeah i'd like to redact my previous statement. pull it all out at once after taking your critters and rock out of the tank.

[RussianBoy]

ok well after talking to many people including my lfs who i trust a lot cause they are so different from other places and never lead me wrong, i have taken most of the water and all my stuff out of the tank and am vacuuming and filling vacuuming and filling, i will keep going till I have clear water from the sand it is so murky i can now understand where all my nitrates were coming from, it's crazy, just pure brown, apparently the previous owner never did this or vacuumed at all... so back to the grind we will see how many hours this takes to get clear water

[RussianBoy]

ok well after talking to many people including my lfs who i trust a lot cause they are so different from other places and never lead me wrong, i have taken most of the water and all my stuff out of the tank and am vacuuming and filling vacuuming and filling, i will keep going till I have clear water from the sand it is so murky i can now understand where all my nitrates were coming from, it's crazy, just pure brown, apparently the previous owner never did this or vacuumed at all... so back to the grind we will see how many hours this takes to get clear water

 

ok step 2 complete livestock still in a bucket tank full, cloudy from new bag of 5lb live sand, filter running, corals in tank but not correctly placed yet... (needed the water) used a lot of RO water and salt... it lowered the nitrates like a normal WC would but I hope that it will start to go down, i could not believe how brown and horrible the stuff from the sand was i don't think it was ever cleaned in the years that the previous owner had it, and from moving it and my mistake of a too big a pump kept moving the sand around way more than it ever should. Will continue to update on the status, if anyone is even reading this.