LivingTropicals
New member
Okay, this is the start of my BB switching experience this last weekend. I'll start off by giving some background first. Then I'll post some pics later of before and after.
My tank is a 180 gallon and has been in use for 2 years now. I first started looking into BB as an alternative many months ago, maybe even a year ago but never had the gumption to do it (scared of the unknown).
Well, for the last year or more I've been battling cyano on my sandbed continually and no matter what I did could not get rid of it. My sand was that really, really fine sand (almost a powder) and never 100% liked it from the beginning. But because I already bought it decided to use it when I started the tank. Since then any powerhead or flow would cause a storm and end of with patches of BB anyways.
After reading much on this site, a few key people here (and my wife) made me finally decide to switch over. It was a long, monumental task that we (my wife and I) did all in one afternoon/evening. Overall took about 10 hours from beginning to end (stage to clean-up) to make the switch over, and man am I happy so far. Started at 3pm last Friday and finished at 1am on Saturday morning, non-stop just stopped long enough to eat some McDees.
I setup several shallow rubbermaid containers, with powerheads and heaters to keep all the livestock (sps, lps, clams, softies, inverts, anemones and fish) they stayed in there for the entire time with no ill effects. More much larger containers were setup to hold rocks - one to hold rocks for cleaning (removed all those small red tube worms that have taken over and anything else we didn't want), one to hold ro/di water for rock cleaning (cleaned and swished all rocks in fresh water to rid of nuisances) and another to keep all cleaned rocks in. Each of these containers was eventually used to store tank water in (plus the rocks) and everything was switched to buckets later on for rock storage and cleaning.
Once all the rocks were out of the tank I removed much of the remaining water into more buckets leaving only 2-3" of water on the bottom plus sand. With a wet vacuum, I vacuumed the all the remaining water out (thanks to my wife for this idea). With nothing but sand left I remove (using a measuring cup) all the sand - over 80lbs of it into buckets that I next day got rid of (dumped in the planter next to my house). After all the sand was removed a final wet vacuum was done to make it 100% clean and sand free.
The next step was to put the rock back in. I did not use any starboard and placed the rock right on the acrylic (very carefully mind you, placed all rocks best I could with flat sides down, so no points directly into the acrylic). Problem was that two rocks (of course the biggest two over 50 lbs each had my two anemones attached. So they had to wait and a spot ready for them once I got enough rock and water back into the tank I put them in.
Problem was that my RO unit was not making enough water to keep up, remember I was using RO water to clean my rocks and had to dump/replace that water about 5 times at 8 gallons each time. When all the rock and water was replaced I still had to make up 45 gallons of new saltwater using tap (not the best thing but I thought it better than wait overnight with corals in holding pins to make more water.) So tap water it was, did not imagine remove the sand would require so much makeup water to be made.
To keep the bottom free of crap, I placed all six of my SEIO 820s at the back of the rockwork, directly on the bottom of the tank at different angles - left, middle and right for all six of them. I left enough room in the back for my arm to fit down and remove/replace the pumps if I need to. I am very happy with that setup, though I do see powercords at the reef top but it has kept the bottom completely free of everything and pushes out to the front. I vacuumed, using a tube siphone into my filter sock, all the stuff off the bottom yesterday and again this morning more shedding that I'll get later.
A Tunze stream kit, TS24, has been purchased for additional flow that my SEIOs were doing. Since their in the back now I lost all the water column flow, only my return pump right now.
I will post some before and after pictures later. Any questions, feel free to ask. Sorry for the long post. Sean.
My tank is a 180 gallon and has been in use for 2 years now. I first started looking into BB as an alternative many months ago, maybe even a year ago but never had the gumption to do it (scared of the unknown).
Well, for the last year or more I've been battling cyano on my sandbed continually and no matter what I did could not get rid of it. My sand was that really, really fine sand (almost a powder) and never 100% liked it from the beginning. But because I already bought it decided to use it when I started the tank. Since then any powerhead or flow would cause a storm and end of with patches of BB anyways.
After reading much on this site, a few key people here (and my wife) made me finally decide to switch over. It was a long, monumental task that we (my wife and I) did all in one afternoon/evening. Overall took about 10 hours from beginning to end (stage to clean-up) to make the switch over, and man am I happy so far. Started at 3pm last Friday and finished at 1am on Saturday morning, non-stop just stopped long enough to eat some McDees.
I setup several shallow rubbermaid containers, with powerheads and heaters to keep all the livestock (sps, lps, clams, softies, inverts, anemones and fish) they stayed in there for the entire time with no ill effects. More much larger containers were setup to hold rocks - one to hold rocks for cleaning (removed all those small red tube worms that have taken over and anything else we didn't want), one to hold ro/di water for rock cleaning (cleaned and swished all rocks in fresh water to rid of nuisances) and another to keep all cleaned rocks in. Each of these containers was eventually used to store tank water in (plus the rocks) and everything was switched to buckets later on for rock storage and cleaning.
Once all the rocks were out of the tank I removed much of the remaining water into more buckets leaving only 2-3" of water on the bottom plus sand. With a wet vacuum, I vacuumed the all the remaining water out (thanks to my wife for this idea). With nothing but sand left I remove (using a measuring cup) all the sand - over 80lbs of it into buckets that I next day got rid of (dumped in the planter next to my house). After all the sand was removed a final wet vacuum was done to make it 100% clean and sand free.
The next step was to put the rock back in. I did not use any starboard and placed the rock right on the acrylic (very carefully mind you, placed all rocks best I could with flat sides down, so no points directly into the acrylic). Problem was that two rocks (of course the biggest two over 50 lbs each had my two anemones attached. So they had to wait and a spot ready for them once I got enough rock and water back into the tank I put them in.
Problem was that my RO unit was not making enough water to keep up, remember I was using RO water to clean my rocks and had to dump/replace that water about 5 times at 8 gallons each time. When all the rock and water was replaced I still had to make up 45 gallons of new saltwater using tap (not the best thing but I thought it better than wait overnight with corals in holding pins to make more water.) So tap water it was, did not imagine remove the sand would require so much makeup water to be made.
To keep the bottom free of crap, I placed all six of my SEIO 820s at the back of the rockwork, directly on the bottom of the tank at different angles - left, middle and right for all six of them. I left enough room in the back for my arm to fit down and remove/replace the pumps if I need to. I am very happy with that setup, though I do see powercords at the reef top but it has kept the bottom completely free of everything and pushes out to the front. I vacuumed, using a tube siphone into my filter sock, all the stuff off the bottom yesterday and again this morning more shedding that I'll get later.
A Tunze stream kit, TS24, has been purchased for additional flow that my SEIOs were doing. Since their in the back now I lost all the water column flow, only my return pump right now.
I will post some before and after pictures later. Any questions, feel free to ask. Sorry for the long post. Sean.
"
