Help with a few Questions

[AcuraCl1]

I am going to be redoing my rock aquascape this week, and I will be putting the rocks, fish and coral in tubs, and have a few questions. I have a 75 gallon tank.

1. Once I have everything out, I was wanting to put an eggcrate at the bottom of the tank, to do this, I am going to have to move some sand around. I have a bag of live sand at the house, should I change out some of my sand, or leave it, and add a little bit of the new sand. I would say my sand bed is about 2" deep, what do you all recommend for depth.

2. After the eggcrate and sand is back in there, I plan to put some water back in there, and then the rock. I plan on using most of the old water. Basically doing a water change of about 14 gallons. Should I do more or will this be fine.

3. Once I have my rock and coral in there, I will be putting the fish back in. I have a blue tang, diamond goby, 3 green chromis, a clown, lemon peel angel, and a few shrimp. And I have at my friends house a yellow tang, and mated clown pair. I am getting rid of my lemon peel, so I will be replacing the angel with the yellow tang, and the one clownfish is going over to my friends house, and I am getting the mated pair. Once I put my fish back in, should I wait a certain period of time before introducing the yellow tang, and mated pair.

4. Will any of this cause a cycle, and if so, anything to prevent it.

Thanks

 

[poolkeeper1]

Are you meaning to make a plenums under your sand bed? You were not clear on your reasoning to add egg crate! And in my opinion any time you disturb an established sand bed you have a reaction to doing so. How large or small of a cycle you get depends on how long you take to do the work and how much sand you add new. I an not sure if a water change on the same day is a good idea or not! I'm sure you will get many different opinions on what you want to do but here is a start. There are a few good bio filter additives that speed a cycle up you could add to help it reestablish quickly. As far as fish go increasing your bioload at the same time you do this is not a good idea IMO. Hope this helps.

 

[AcuraCl1]

Thanks, I was going to put the plastic egg crate at the bottom to help with making my rock more secure without scratching or cracking the bottom glass.

 

[ai-reefer]

I agree with poolkeeper. It's probably not a good idea to mess with the sand bed. If you have a quarantine tank then i guess you can keep your fish and inverts in there for a week until your tank settles. In any case this will be very stressful on your 7 fish.

You will not crack the glass unless you drop a really heavy rock directly on the glass. The saltwater has plenty of buoyancy and friction to slow down the rock and the sand will cushon the surface of the glass in case of accidents. Just take your time and do it slowly and have someone there to assist you.

As far as scratches, who cares, no one is ever going to see the bottom of the tank.

 

[AcuraCl1]

Ok, thanks. I will leave the sand bed the way it is, but can I add some live sand to it, I would like to level it out, and what is a good depth for the sand bed.

 

[DMBillies]

Re: Help with a few Questions

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14098771#post14098771 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by AcuraCl1
1. Once I have everything out, I was wanting to put an eggcrate at the bottom of the tank, to do this, I am going to have to move some sand around. I have a bag of live sand at the house, should I change out some of my sand, or leave it, and add a little bit of the new sand. I would say my sand bed is about 2" deep, what do you all recommend for depth.

I'm not sure how much egg crate is going to help with the rock slide issue unless you literally attach your rocks to it. I've been running barebottom for quite a while and I have very few issues with slides. If you're trying to do some pretty crazy aquascaping, I could see that you might have problems with sliding, but I would expect the sand to help stabilize it alot and that the egg crate really wouldn't do too much.

Also, a sand bed of 2", from everything I've read is just about where you DON'T want to be. Deeper allows for the creation of aerobic zones for denitrifying. Shallower gives you the look of sand without having it trap food that will increase nitrates. I'd read up on that. I believe the conventional wisdom is >4" or <1". I'm no expert on this, but definitely look into it or hopefully someone else will respond.

I'm also not sure how egg crate might effect the above recommendation, since it will compartmentalize the bottom 3/8" or so of your sand bed.

Also, FWIW, I've never disturbed a sand bed and had it do anything besides create a huge algae outbreak. This is one of the reasons that I've switched to BB... it's cheaper and I have needed to move tanks fairly frequently, so getting a nicely established sand bed has been a pipe dream.

2. After the eggcrate and sand is back in there, I plan to put some water back in there, and then the rock. I plan on using most of the old water. Basically doing a water change of about 14 gallons. Should I do more or will this be fine.

I think you'll basically have to change out a decent amount of your water between moving the sand and stirring stuff back up as you add the water back in. I don't think that is a huge problem as long as you focus on getting the dirtiest water out that you can (i.e., if you move the sand, only do it once you've pretty much drained the tank and then suck the last of that really dirty water off before you add water... very slowly... back in.)

3. Once I have my rock and coral in there, I will be putting the fish back in. I have a blue tang, diamond goby, 3 green chromis, a clown, lemon peel angel, and a few shrimp. And I have at my friends house a yellow tang, and mated clown pair. I am getting rid of my lemon peel, so I will be replacing the angel with the yellow tang, and the one clownfish is going over to my friends house, and I am getting the mated pair. Once I put my fish back in, should I wait a certain period of time before introducing the yellow tang, and mated pair.

4. Will any of this cause a cycle, and if so, anything to prevent it.

I would certainly expect a little bit of a "cycle" from turning up the sand bed. I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be dangerous to the fish (I would think you have plenty of bacteria in your rocks and substrate to process the ammonia and nitrites... and I would think most of what would come out of the bed would already be processed to nitrates) but I would expect a nitrate spike which would likely cause an algae outbreak.

I'd get the fish out that are leaving the tank while you have it empty (catching fish out of a set-up tank is a nightmare) and then wait a couple of weeks to put the new fish in. It sounds like the clowns might have to switch spots (clowns will likely fight). I would imagine they are small in comparison to the tang (less of a bio-load problem), so no big deal. I'd wait on the tang for sure if you can.