Adding more sand to an already cycled tank ?

CoralBeauty13

New member
HI Guys, I am a noob here and reading all the forums have given me such a brighter understanding on how things work. I do have a question. I have about a 2 in sand bed and would like to get it to around 4 inches. Just reading on the positives it does for the tanks, makes me want to get it to the best I can. There is nothing wrong at the moment, running great I might ad, but I want to put some corals and clams that are sand dwellers in and I read I would need a good deep sand bed for certain ones. Would I need to take the whole tank down and let it recycle again if I were to add new sand? It would be live sand, and i'm afraid of crazy hitchhikers and just something strange going wrong. Any help would be highly appreciated.
 
If you are buying live sand there shouldn't be a problem with hitch hikers or cycling.
If you are collecting your own sand, then there are potential problems!

I added sand to my established tank, and the only problems are the gosh darned cloudiness that ensues. I tried funneling the sand through a PVC pipe to keep the cloudiness to a minimum and that idea didn't work well at all. Side from cloudiness that takes days to clear, and blowing fallen sand off f the current occupants, you shouldn't have any problems.
 
Even with live sand there will be some die off. I just did this last month with dry sand on a one year old system. Just make sure you rinse it and I wouldn't add more then one inch per week. Also, if you want the benefits on dsb you should find a sand grain under 1.0mm yet bigger then sugar fine sand. For gobys I wouldn't go larger then 1.5mm. Good luck! :)
 
What about adding dry "collected" sand (assuming it is thoroughly washed) to a system with Live Sand and LR already?

Would that be ok since Live sand/rock will just seed the dry sand?
 
IMO adding live sand is not a problem - just check water levels for the first few days after and do water changes if necessary if there are any spikes. That's it.
 
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