Transferring old coral sand to new aquarium?

[Parfitt1234]

Hey

 

ive just got a new tank and am going to start transferring the fish over today. Should I transfer my old coral sand to the new aquarium? It’s been running for around 6 weeks and just don’t want to start a cycle again in my new tank if I throw away the sand?

 

thanks

[j.falk]

If it's used sand full of detritus, it should be rinsed clean before reusing.  If you have live rock in your current tank that is already cycled and you transfer it over with the sand, you shouldn't have another cycle as the rock will be full of bacteria that will be able to keep up with your tank's bioload.

[Parfitt1234]

I have some live rock which will be going over. I mean I’d prefer to not use the old sand! I just don’t want to throw away a load of bacteria. So should I keep it or not?

 

thanks for your help

[Ash1176]

From what I understand, its good practise to get new sand, your old sand will be really dirty

as long as you have live rock bought over from the old tank, maybe add some bottled bacteria to help so it’s doesn’t do a mini cycle! And keep your eye out for ammonia (seachem ammonia alert are great for that)

[j.falk]

1 hour ago, Parfitt1234 said:

I have some live rock which will be going over. I mean I’d prefer to not use the old sand! I just don’t want to throw away a load of bacteria. So should I keep it or not?

 

thanks for your help

If you want to reuse the old sand you can...just rinse it really good before adding it to the new tank.  You'll want to remove as much of the detritus buildup as you possibly can.

 

The tank I have now is bare bottom (no sand...only live rock) and I love it.  No more cleaning the sand bed and the detritus is easy to get to and suck out when I do my small weekly water changes.  I'll never go back to sand again.  

 

When I upgraded to a new tank, I took all of the old water, live rock and livestock from the old tank and added it directly to my new tank then added new water to make up the difference in water volume.  No losses and I didn't go through another cycle.

[Clown79]

Either wash the old sand thoroughly saving only a cup of unwashed sand or replace it with new.

 

 

You can wash the old sand in tap and final rinse out with rodi and seachem prime.

[Ash1176]

16 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

You can wash the old sand in tap and final rinse out with rodi and seachem prime.

Chlorine will kill the beneficial bacteria though! Better to rinse in RO/DI as OP wanted to keep as much BB 

[Parfitt1234]

I went to my local fish store today and they said to transfer the sand over. I’m not going to rinse it under tap water Obvs as don’t want to kill BB. I bought some more live rock aswell so I’m going to leave it in new tank for couple days just in case I have a bit of ammonia before transferring everything over 

[Ash1176]

Awesome! What’s the tank?

[Clown79]

1 hour ago, Ash1176 said:

Chlorine will kill the beneficial bacteria though! Better to rinse in RO/DI as OP wanted to keep as much BB 

The rodi will also kill the beneficial bacteria. Its not just the chlorine, fw will also do it.

 

The point is to start fresh and seed it with the cup of old sand that has benefits in it.

 

Your main beneficial bacteria is in the rocks. In 6 week old sand, there isn't going to much in it that is beneficial

 

I and many others have washed our sand completely in tap and even used completely new sand- no issue.

 

You are more likely to have a spike in ammonia and a slew of algae issues when reusing old sand.

[Ash1176]

6 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

The rodi will also kill the beneficial bacteria. Its not just the chlorine, fw will also do it.

 

 

Never heard that! 
Will look into it 

[Clown79]

1 minute ago, Ash1176 said:

Never heard that! 
Will look into it 

 

After numerous tank transfers, tank builds, tank rebuilds, i would never reuse old sand without a thorough washing.

 

Fresh water will equally kill any beneficial bacteria as chlorine will. Thats why FW dips are used to remove stuff you don't want on corals, rocks, etc.

 

People have bare bottoms, successful tanks without sand, the liverock is your bio filter.

 

Anyone with a short sand bed won't get the level of benefits many think from the sand. You need a dsb for that.

 

 

[Tired]

Clean sand, with a couple handfuls worth of old sand, will do just fine. Poke around in the old sand a little and try to spoon out some worms and whatnot, maybe.

[Parfitt1234]

50 minutes ago, Ash1176 said:

Awesome! What’s the tank?

It’s a 105L tank! A lot bigger than the old one haha! Do you think then if tomorrow if the ammonia is okay I could transfer everything over? I just don’t want to cause an ammonia spike! 

43 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

The rodi will also kill the beneficial bacteria. Its not just the chlorine, fw will also do it.

 

The point is to start fresh and seed it with the cup of old sand that has benefits in it.

 

Your main beneficial bacteria is in the rocks. In 6 week old sand, there isn't going to much in it that is beneficial

 

I and many others have washed our sand completely in tap and even used completely new sand- no issue.

 

You are more likely to have a spike in ammonia and a slew of algae issues when reusing old sand.

Thank you! I will add just a little bit of the old sand then just in case!

[Clown79]

19 minutes ago, Parfitt1234 said:

It’s a 105L tank! A lot bigger than the old one haha! Do you think then if tomorrow if the ammonia is okay I could transfer everything over? I just don’t want to cause an ammonia spike! 

Thank you! I will add just a little bit of the old sand then just in case!

If a tank transfer is done properly there shouldn't be any spike.

 

Do a search on here for tank transfer, many of us have done them and documented what we did and the outcome

[Ash1176]

1 hour ago, Clown79 said:

 

After numerous tank transfers, tank builds, tank rebuilds, i would never reuse old sand without a thorough washing.

 

 

How about washing it with saltwater then? Clean the sand and keep the bb? 
 

[Ash1176]

42 minutes ago, Parfitt1234 said:

It’s a 105L tank! 
 

congrats!!! 

[Parfitt1234]

ello

 

ALL MY FISH DIED OVERNIGHT!

 

i recently bought a new tank (105L) upgrading from my 40L. I made sure the salinity was the same, ph the same etc. 
 

I bought two new pieces of live rock. 
 

I transferred everything over from the old tank first (old love rock, coral) then transferred the fish into a bucket with old tank water and put a couple of cups of the new water before adding them in (I think I didn’t do this long enough for them to acclimate. They were doing fine and then this morning all fish (two clowns and one azure damsel) were all dead!

 

Do you think the reasoning for this is that the new water shocked them too much? Even though I made sure temperature, ph and salinity was the same. KH GH was the same also. All the crabs etc are alive. Do you think the shock was the reason? 
There wouldn’t be something out of the new live rock that could’ve killed them? Like some sort of hitchhiker? I’m still a beginner so I’m still learning so any constructive answers would be great as I want to make sure the water is fine before adding more fish. Thank you

 

AMMONIA: 0

NITRITE: 0.50 (this shocked me this morning when I tested as never had a problem with nitrite in the other tank. But surely this isn’t enough to kill all my fish?)

NITRATE: 10ppm

PH: 8.1

GH: 425 mg/I (V.Hard)

Total alkalinity: 40mg/I

KH: 80mg/I

 

ALL OF THESE WERE THE SAME IN THE OTHER TANK.

 

any help appreciated thank you!!

[j.falk]

Did you transfer all of your old water to the new tank?

[Parfitt1234]

No. None of it

[j.falk]

21 hours ago, Parfitt1234 said:

No. None of it

 

On 7/23/2020 at 8:19 AM, j.falk said:

When I upgraded to a new tank, I took all of the old water, live rock and livestock from the old tank and added it directly to my new tank then added new water to make up the difference in water volume.  No losses and I didn't go through another cycle.

Don't know what to tell you then.

[Clown79]

1 hour ago, Parfitt1234 said:

No. None of it

How exactly did you do the tank transfer?

 

Step by step detail.

 

A tank transfer if done correctly should come with no problems.

[Parfitt1234]

So I first took out my old live rock and added that, then the coral, then I drained some of the old water out into a bucket and put the fish in it. I then added a bit of the old coral sand in my new aquarium. I added a bit of the new aquarium water (not much though) to the bucket with the fish in. And then added them in.

i also took the old filter cartridges and added them to the new filter. 
 

im thinking either shock? Or it must’ve been from the new rock that I added into the new tank the day before they moved over. The new tank was only running for two days.

[Clown79]

Rock removal should be done last. Once you disturb the sand by removing rock, a slew of stuff is released into the water.

 

Removing the water into buckets first to save as much as possible for reuse,  placing a powerhead/air hose in them, then corals in 1 bucket and fish into another.

 

Rocks then removed and placed into another bucket of water.

 

Set up new tank. Add rocks, sand, old water saved, new water. Let sit and heat up.

 

Test the water. If all is good, then slowly add livestock.

 

Did you research before hand the best tank transfer methods?

 

 

[mitten_reef]

40 minutes ago, Parfitt1234 said:

 

i also took the old filter cartridges and added them to the new filter. 

 

This could also be one of the culprit, depending on how dirty it was.  You really don’t want to use old filter media, unlike fresh water. Sorry to for the losses.