BioCube sand change ?

[J Fox]

Hello everyone..
So what I have going on is I have a 29 gallon BioCube that has fallen from its heyday after a little neglect. I'm back all in now and am wondering as my new snails and hermits are cleaning up and I'm cleaning up what I can... How is the best way to change out the sand? I always wanted a coarser sand so the flow wouldn't move it - my plan was to slowly start vacuuming it out a little at a time with water changes. (I'm doing them twice a week at 4 gallons each). The sand that's in there now is just dirty and too fine.. lots of algae in spots. So that's my idea. I plan to use a bag of the live sand that's white and more coarse. Thank you for any advice !
Jeff

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Welcome to RC J Fox!

Throw your rocks and tank water in a vessel. Remove old sand. Clean up the tank if needed, and throw new sand in, followed by rocks and tank water. Hope this helps!

 

[J Fox]

Thanks for the welcome !
The rocks in my tank are glued and stacked right on bottom and currently are still home to corals. The sand was added after. I just seems to me the sand has gotten very dirty and I thought it would make the tank look so much better.
I guess my question was more about the potential issues it may or may not cause by taking the sand out and replacing. Thank you for the reply !

 

[Michael Hoaster]

The new sand may go through a diatom/new tank algae phase. Sand beds get dirty over time, as detritus settles out. If you have detrivores, like worms and pods, your sand bed can become a living detritus processor, literally wriggling with life. Seems like most reefers these days prefer a sterile, clean sand bed devoid of life. In that case you'd want sand sifters like gobies and sand sifting sea stars. They will keep your sand bed clean. Though they may not like the new coarse sand. You can also manually stir up your sand bed, to suspend detritus long enough for filtration and your corals to filter it.