Storing live sand?

[kevin95695]

I heard of reefers keeping live sand in buckets in their garage, etc.

Seems to me that in order to keep live sand 'live' you'd have to keep up flow, temp, etc.

I'm thinking about taking most of the sand out of my tank until I change my mind and want to keep it alive along the way.

What's the word? Thanks.

 

[MrMikeB]

Well I would say it depends on what your definition of 'live sand' is. If you are wanting to keep copepods and the like alive, you will need to provide them water and nutrients to survive off of. If you are looking to simply keep certain types of bacteria from dying, you can typically store it for a period of time. Ever see the sealed bags that you typically buy the stuff from the LFS in? Not much goes into keeping that stuff alive, save common sense stuff (no storing at 20 degrees, leaving in the sun, etc.).

That being said, if you are removing your sand that has been in your tank, there will be tons of things in that sand above and beyond simple bacteria that will go with it. Storing that in a garage will inevitably kill it off and should you decide to use the sand again, you will have one hell of an ammonia spike due to the die off. It is compounded even further since you are stirring that stuff up and releasing the toxins into the water when you take it out and put it back. So my opinion is that you technically could store your sand and keep it live, but you would crazy to try and reuse it after it being offline for awhile. I would clean the sand and treat it as dead sand should you decide to use it again. In an estbalished system, or at least one with live rock, it will become live soon enough.

 

[bored4long]

What about just skimming off the top of the sand bed to keep live? Would that avoid the undesirable toxins below and still provide him with the microfauna he wishes to maintain? Just a thought...

 

[MrMikeB]

I do not think skimming to top sand is not going to help much. Sand typically establishes an little eco-sytem at different layers and the nitrates/toxins/etc. are released when these layers are disturbed. I have never tried to skim the top layer, so I am just hypothesizing.

I can share one experience though. I recently moved a longstanding 125 from Dixon. It had some some awesome corals colonies and I was lucky enough to pick up the whole system - cherry setup! I moved the corals in a sealed vats in my truck and loaded the tank in the back. The tank had approx 3 inches of sand that I thought I would just leave in because it would be simpler, and a 125 is not too heavy.

I got everything home, where I had fresh new salt water ready to go for a temporary storage of these specimens. The idea was that I would temporarily hold them for a couple days in the same tank (with the new water), using the same filtration system that it was running with for years successfully.

Wow, what a mistake. I did not account for the sand being stirred up (just from moving the tank in the back of the truck). Most of the corals did not make it and water testing (a day later when I noticed something was not right) showed a substantial ammonia spike. I am 99% sure it was the sand. A hard lesson learned of many more to come I am sure.