Sand beds and hypo-salinity

[small alien]

Greetings friends. I am about to hypo a 20 gallon tank at .012 for 6 weeks. Tank has a cardinal, ocellated dragonet, banded pipe, trimma goby and Rainford's goby. Tank has been running for a year in this location.

I removed all the rock and corals other than a few smallish pieces of rubble. I removed all the CUC that I could find over two days. I'm pretty sure I got almost all of them. Undoubtedly, there will be a few nasarius snails or the like that end up being left behind and succumbing, but not many.

I would like to leave the sand bed (about 2" deep) in place during the treatment period. Can I? If not, why not?

Thanks a lot. -small

 

[DJREEF]

You can, but it'll more than likely crash - and screw up the water chemistry, at least initially.

DJ

 

[LargeAngels]

Yup. Everthing in the sand bed will die and most likely cause an ammonia spike.

 

[RBU1]

Yes and not to mention .012 is not low enough for a hypo treatment. You want to be at 1.008-1.009 range....

Your better off in a seperate tank that has an established biological filter and treat with copper.....

 

[sfboarders]

Use a bare tank with PVC pipe for hiding. 1.012 is not low enough. It needs to be at 1.008 - 1.009. Make a slow drip of baked baking soda to control your pH levels and use amquel + or prime to keep your ammonia, nitirite, and nitrate at tolerable levels and don't forget to do WC. Good Luck!

 

[small alien]

Thanks for your thoughts, all.

 

[Chris27]

While hypo won't kill the bacteria in the sandbed, it will kill the microfauna that your gobies and dragonet are using for a food source. Those guys are a little rough to QT properly solely because of their dietary needs. Perhaps a little more research is in order...

 

[csmfish]

Not too mention it probably would not work. I hava a 6", yea, deeper than yours, and ick returned. Not even worth chancing. The time is even harder than the money for another tank. Go through a "8" week fallow period MIN and just get her over with.

 

[small alien]

Thanks. I was going to just go to .012 because of the pipefish. I've read that's appropriate for seahorses and figured that would translate to pipes. If that's not low enough, then it doesn't make much sense.

I have another tank. I was really a matter of ease and that I have an ocellated dragonet that sleeps in the sand so I wanted so in there.

I'll just take everyone out, take the sand out, put everyone back in and put a bowl of new sand in there that hopefully the dragonet will use.

Thanks.

 

[DJREEF]

If it's an established DSB, you don't want to move it, unless you plan on scrapping it and starting over. Mixing the sediment layers will cause the bed to colapse, leaving you with about the same as we discussed above. I say just use fresh sand for the dragonette to sleep in while in the quarantine tank, and leave the sand in the main system where it is.

DJ

 

[csmfish]

Amen! Take the fish out of the main tank, redo your aquascaping and then let her go for 8 weeks. Do NOT add any corals, inverts or anything. On second thought, heck, go get a few additions of shrimp or an anemone now. Then let the tank stay fallow with everything you have now but the fish. Your main tank will then be free of ick after 8 weeks and you will have some new additions to keep you from being bored with an empty tank during that time. Arange it like you want it so, when you start that ticker, you will not be like "man, I want that zoa but now I have to wait 8 weeks before i can put it in", lol. Been there, done that!

 

[small alien]

Thanks all. Good advice.