Adding sand to running tank....little help all.

[Tmyboy]

Currently my 75g has a crushed coral/sand substrate....and it's bit chunky which I'm not too fond of. When I started in this hobby, someone told me to go that route because of what a massive pain it is to vacuum the tank with just sand in there.

It's been a while now and I'm realizing that I'd prefer to have much more sand than i have right now.

2 questions:

I have a ton of pods througout the tank now....some of them are getting pretty big actually (size of a pencil tip!) because I don't really have anything that really feeds off them. Will adding a layer of sand on top screw that up?? They are constantly crawing around and underneath the coral chunks and I don't want to bury them.

Secondly....how would i go about laying down this sand in a controlled manner? Friends has suggested that i use a pcv tube, place it down in the water and have him slowly pour the rinsed and dried sand as i direct it. Kinda like a concrete truck application.

Any insight would be very much appreciated! Thanks!

T

 

[Tmyboy]

Little help please!!

 

[tjm80]

If you try to cover the crushed coral up with sand, the sand will end up settling to the bottom and you will have crushed coral on top. What I'd recommend is siphoning out sections of the crushed coral at a time and replacing it with aragonite sand. Do a section each day or so until it's all replaced. If you do it all at once you'll unleash a ton of waste in the tank causing an ammonia spike.

As far as putting sand in the tank, I saw a video of someone filling a 20 oz bottle with sand and and topping it off with tank water, then turning the bottle upside down and squeezing the sand out. All the dust floats up into the bottle and doesn't cloud the tank.

Also, you're not supposed to bump posts, in case a mod hasn't already messaged you

 

[Tmyboy]

Thanks for the response.

I didn't even think about the possible ammonia spike from removing large amounts of the substrate. Good point.

I'll do plan on trying that bottle trick!!

 

[tjm80]

Doing it sections would help save some of the pod population as well, but I'd guess that you have plenty in your live rock anyway.

As for the bottle trick, I think dry aragonite sand and a 2 liter would be best. Don't waste your money on the wet "live" sand.

 

[Tmyboy]

How often would you remove and add? Like5-10 lbs at a time?
Once a week??