Deep sand bed is years expired. Time to remove. Ideas?

Brian's 11 step removal and replacement with RDSB process seems fairly bullet proof. I agree you can't just syphon it out. You have to replace the water. There is just no way to remove it without releasing a lot of nasty stuff.
 
RonMidtownStomp said:
I'm not sure how you can say it's "required."
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I believe some sort of renwable bio-filtration is required to prevent what I call a toxic tank syndrome crash in old (3-5 years) reef tanks. In this case, crashing means a big pest algae bloom, most corals recede, many die. In the worst cases, everything dies.

If a survey of TOTM tanks that are five or more years old found none use any form of renewable bio-filtration then I'm probably wrong.

Did you exclude the younger tanks from your survey?

Besides DSBs and carbon dosing did your survey find any other types of renewable bio-filtation?

EDIT: In this context when I say renewable bio-filtration I mean renewable bacteria media.
 
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I will keep you all posted on how my sand replacement goes. The direction I am leaning to is taking very small amounts at a time with a siphon hose. The theory is that pulling the sand in increments with the hose will hopefully take out a lot of the instantly released impurities at the same time. Going to keep the carbon reactor fresh, keep the skimmer clean, and cracken, and also up the water change schedule. Most importantly I will monitor and animals. They will tell me a lot as this goes on. I've had the same coral and fish for many many years. I know their behavior very well.
 
you've been warned

you've been warned

remove ALL of the DSB at once!

RonMidtownStomp said:
I would think it's be a whole lot safer to do it all at once and have at least a 50% water change ready to go. I think if it were me I'd be set up to do 25% water changes every 4 hours for 16 hours.

By removing part at a time you're exposing things that I don't think you want exposed.
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With so many other options to remove nitrate such as carbon dosing, sulfur denitrator, refugium, water changes, there really isn't an incentive to do a ticking time bomb (dsb) anymore.
 
+1

Totally agree with the post above. I ended up scooping the sand bed slowly over months. Keep the skimmer clean. Also I kept fresh GFO and carbon in the reactor during the removal. At first I tried siphoning the sand but my hose would immediately clog with larger pieces of gravel that was in the sand.
 
psykobowler said:
With so many other options to remove nitrate such as carbon dosing, sulfur denitrator, refugium, water changes, there really isn't an incentive to do a ticking time bomb (dsb) anymore.
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Yes that is corrct but I like the look of the sand and now that is been in the tank for several years what is one to do?

I did vodka dosing works well but one needs to balance it out wih nutrients or Sps go pale.

Thanks everyone
 
I would transfer the rock, fish, corals and old sea water in a Rubbermaid container without disturbing the sand and then remove the sand and dispose of it all in one shot. Clean the display. Then transfer back rock, water, fish and corals in the tank. Add ssb around the liverock. Just replace the water displaced by the old sand with new saltwater.
 
psykobowler said:
I would transfer the rock, fish, corals and old sea water in a Rubbermaid container without disturbing the sand and then remove the sand and dispose of it all in one shot. Clean the display. Then transfer back rock, water, fish and corals in the tank. Add ssb around the liverock. Just replace the water displaced by the old sand with new saltwater.
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Thanks for the suggestion but I am not willing to tear down a 120 gallon tank.
 
Siphoned it out but take the big tube off of the other ones be careful though your nitrates will spike also your phosphates
 
He's got an old school deep sand bed. If he placed his rocks on top of at least 4" sand bed it could collapse his rock work as he removes the sand. If it were only 2" deep then siphoning would make sense. However, a 120 is not that hard to temporarily tear down. It is basically a 4 foot nano tank compared to the system I am currently running. Removing the deep sand and adding just an ssb would allow for more room for corals to grow . For me that is enough reward to go through the hassle of a tank teardown.
 
psykobowler said:
However, a 120 is not that hard to temporarily tear down. It is basically a 4 foot nano tank compared to the system I am currently running.
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Everything is a nano tank compared to your system!
I think that it comes down to how much effort you can put into it at a time or to what degree you want to change things.
 
psykobowler said:
He's got an old school deep sand bed. If he placed his rocks on top of at least 4" sand bed it could collapse his rock work as he removes the sand. If it were only 2" deep then siphoning would make sense. However, a 120 is not that hard to temporarily tear down. It is basically a 4 foot nano tank compared to the system I am currently running. Removing the deep sand and adding just an ssb would allow for more room for corals to grow . For me that is enough reward to go through the hassle of a tank teardown.
Click to expand...

Well the tank was bare bottom in the beginning so all I did was place the live rock right on top of white star board. After about a year I added sand to the tank right over the starboard. So the rocks are in good shape and all I did was place sand around the rock work about 3 1/2 inches deep. The problem is the tank is 30 x 30 x 31 deep so it's really hard to remove all the rocks and all the sps that are encrusted on the rocks.

So how much of the sand can I safely remove at one time and what is the best sand to add back?
 
so what is a shallow sand bed? 1-3"?
i have a 150g that i placed rocks, then added 120lb of "live" (wet, haha) sand to.
it is about 2" deep, 3 at most in some spots. as shallow as 1" in others.

not a dsb right?
 
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