"Rip" clean sand bed, or just replace.

[Pjanssen]

It seems to me, with the hours of fresh water rinsing that it would take to get all of my sand clean, I might be better of just replacing it with new live sand. I'm sure it would take several hundred, if not a thousand + gallons of water, and water is not free.  Lets hear your thoughts.

[brandon429]

I've seen people flatly refuse to clean a sandbed for twenty years straight and the tank ran well

(AZDesert rat)

What's prompting the big job was curious

[aclman88]

I am on the same page as you. After reading sand rinse threads I realize that in the future if I were to do it, I may just buy a new thing of sand. That being said, when you buy new sand you usually end up rinsing out a ton anyways to get all the silt and fine particulate out of it, so it doesn’t cloud up your tank.

[ryans.salty.crew]

Post pics of current problems. That always helps.

[Pjanssen]

At this point just looking for feedback. I was gone for a month and left the tank to untrained hands-over feeding and less frequent filter sock exchanges and I've got an excess of nutrients and some turf algae growing, mostly on the sand bed. as I was removing the algae via syphon, a lot of sand came with it, so it just got me thinking about it.

1 hour ago, aclman88 said:

when you buy new sand you usually end up roaming out a ton anyways to get all the silt and fine particulate out of it, so it doesn’t cloud up your tank.

Good point

[Pjanssen]

my other thought on this is that if I'm rinsing sand with tap water then 1 am I adding a bunch of tds that likely won't be washed away with a simple RO/DI rinse, and 2 won't I be killing all of the beneficial bacteria since my municipal water is treated heavily with chlorine? 

[brandon429]

We don't care what happens to sandbed bacteria they're expendable. 

 

 

We can turn any tank bare bottom/ no sand instantly without harm or cycle and not put sand back in the tank. Lots of people pull their sand for good in our threads. We do it differently than brs does.

 

Rinsing in sand to create inert grains isn't more harmful than complete removal like we do sometimes. 

 

Same analogy: we can take any reef here and install two canister filters it didn't need, packed in siporax ring media. Let them run online for sixty days, that's fully cycled. all the media will by rule of contact time be cycled; extra bacteria lines the tank now. 

 

You can instantly unplug both canisters and the tank doesn't care nor recycle.

 

The false rule was that loss of any bacteria was a deficit that had to be made up somewhere else

 

The truth is, live rock runs any reef on its own- you can add to it, and then take those additions away one day and you're still left with the originally functioning surface area. 

 

Additionally, sandbeds are like fish bioload they are zones of oxygen competition against your fish, loads of detritus are substrate for gross excess aerobic bacteria. They present acidic zones, where bacteria digest a feed substrate,  and in the event of a power outage the mess in a common sandbed is very much fighting to use up resources against your corals and fish.

 

Cleaning all that back to safe, even if just once, is always refreshing. Regarding tds, it's a concern with no precedent. We've never cared to measure it in ten thousand rip cleans.