tank change

M

Mappelbaum37

New member
Hey. I have a 75 gal. mixed tank. I have 7 fish and a bunch of corals and about 80 pounds of live rock. In the future maybe during the winter or sometime around there i might want to move around all the rocks in my tank. Just curious, but how would I go about doing this? Should I transfer fish and corals into a 20 gal. tank I have (not running, I would fill it up w/ same tank water.) It would be a pretty big change because I have mostly big rocks, some small ones and everything would be moved around. I might not even end up doing this change in decoration but Im just curious if I did.

Thanks.
 
Well, I will give you an idea of what I just finished doing.

Redid my 58 over the last 24 hours (( was getting rid of the old rock -- too much bubble algae, yellow polyps and GSP )) Put all the old rock and some of the water into 2 rubbermaid container. All the livestock is in there too -- have a heater and a powerhead in there too.

Removed the old sandbed (( 7 years old, crushed coral )) put in a new sandbed and the new rocks (( been curing for over a month in another rubbermaid )) Everything is back running now, but I am going to hold off putting the livestock back in for a day or two.

So I think you could do something similar to that. How old is your current sandbed and how deep is it? Try to save as much of the water as you can, and keep the rocks wet and you should be fine. The only concern is the sandbed.
 
about a year ago I made a bad choice by using caribsea and aragonite crushed coral as my subtrate instead of sand. How would I switch? Where did you say you put your fish? containers? did you keep the containers in the tank while you changed everything? My rocks arent old but whenever I re arrange my rocks a week later I always find something that would look better to me but im sticking with what I have now because all my corals and fish are currently doing good and i dont want to mess anything up.
 
Pictures are worth a thousand words. ;)

Here is where my fish and corals are right now (( the rock that is in there now is the old stuff, going to clean then sell it ))

holding1.jpg


holding2.jpg


I had a CC sandbed too, don't any more. :)

Here is what I've come up with after 24 hours of work. My LTA is going to go on the left hand side once I put everything back in.

New58.jpg
 
I like the way everything came out! so would I be able to put my corals in the buckets too? Also, would I be able to change my subtrate from crushed coral to sand. If so, do you know how?
 
Thanks.

I don't see why not, I have a bunch of SPS in those containers right now.

I did it. Just drain the tank -- save as much water as you can. And start scooping it out. It took me about an hour to get the old bed out. Took a couple of hours to put the new one back in -- had to rise the new sand first, so that added to the time.
 
If you add a new bed of sand dont you have to go through the whole cycle process again or no? With sand you dont have to use siphons or pythons or any cleanings vacs, right?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11021867#post11021867 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Mappelbaum37
If you add a new bed of sand dont you have to go through the whole cycle process again or no? With sand you dont have to use siphons or pythons or any cleanings vacs, right?
Click to expand...

There might be a tiny one, but if you are using cured live rock there shouldn't be any issues.

I personally do gravel vac my sandbeds with each water change -- though I run shallow sandbeds in each of my tanks. If you run a DSB you shouldn't vac it. A lot of people don't like to touch their sandbeds. For me it is an old habit from my fresh water days -- and it has been working for me, so I am still doing it.
 
Why is that? Does it hide in a rock?

If that is the case, and it is a smaller rock, remove the rock to a separate container.

When I moved some rocks around in my 29, I didn't notice my tailspot blenny was in one of the rocks, found him in the bottom of the styro box, lucky enough there was some water in there.
 
ya my blenny has a rock and sleeps in one of the holes at night. when and IF i do this whole change after everything is done and I have sand would getting a sand sifting goby (as well as snails and hermit crabs) be necessary? should I wait a little for some bacteria to kick in until I get the goby? Should I not get one at all???
 
I personally don't like sand sifting gobies. Mainly because I could never keep them alive all that long- would either jump out or starve. But, if you do want one, I would wait a while, let the sand bed get some life back into it.

Would suggest getting some Nass snails instead, they do a good job of keeping the sand bed stirred up and clean. These are what I am talking about
 
I like serpent stars and brittle stars (( except for the green ones -- IME they are fish eaters ))

Would suggest staying away from sand shifting stars -- they will starve in most tanks, and before that happens they will eat everything in the sand bed.
 
well thats good to know. Anything else thats connected with sand that I should be thinking about other then snails and hermit crabs??
 
Do you know is you are going with a shallow or deep sand bed?

Perhaps go slowly with introducing the snails and crabs, give you time to adjust to how many you actually need.
 
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