Advice? Sand

I removed all of my sand about a month ago with no problems, but it was a little bit easier for me since i only have a 10 gallon display tank. The way i went about removing it was putting all of the livestock in 5 gallon buckets and saving as much water as i could since i was going to remove all of the sand at once, which would also be removing beneficial bacteria. removed the sand (crushed coral) using a half gallon bucket with ease since i didn't have to worry about nutrient sinks, or cloudy water killing livestock (be careful of bristle worms tho!). Replaced the tank water and livestock and i only had to add about a gallon of water. The entire process only took a few hours and i moved at a snail's pace .

If you have a bigger tank and you are not able to move everything out easily then remove the sand slowly when you do your water changes weekly or biweekly with a siphon tube. The big thing here is to do it slowly over the course of a month or so. This way you make sure not to stress anything out by adding a tsunami of nutrients to your water column.

As far as adding the new sand into an already established system i am not too sure. Is it live sand or dry? I would let it cure for the month or more that you are taking the current sand bed out. This is to not cause cloudiness when you add the new sand. I wouldn't think adding the new sand in all at once would cause any problems but it wouldn't hurt to do that slowly as well!Please correct me if i am wrong, however.

interested to see how this turns out, if you could post pictures of the blue sand bed when it is settled that would be cool! Good luck to you.

-Andrew

 

I wouldnt

That type of sand is meant for freshwater systems, not saltwater.

 

After soaking also be sure to test the water you used for soaking for silicates.