Adding new sand?

[Dr. Peter Venkman]

Hey everyone,

Last week I was visiting a friend, who happens to be a fellow reefer. That morning he told me that he had taken all his old sand out of his 70g and replaced it with new sand. I had never heard or anyone doing this and I have doubts on it being successful. Does anyone have any background or experience with this.

 

[brandon429]

450 examples
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/official-sand-rinse-and-tank-transfer-thread.230281/

:)

 

[brandon429]

its a valid question for sure, this is part of the saga between new and old cycling science. I like to make summaries between the two reefing views for the various examples we get on the site.

old cycling science said: you cannot remove all sand instantly, the bacteria are required to keep your cycle in control.


new cycling science, which uses the data seneye users upload to the internet for the last 6+ years:

live rock surface area, and its inclusions, are what we need to keep rather constant. you can remove, add to, subtract from, rinse with tap water, or totally change out any surface area that is a filter from a reef tank without fail as long as the live rock % remains enough to meet the demands of the tank.

 

[brandon429]

our hobby was never going to progress out of old cycling science rules as long as we solely had API and red sea ammonia testing on file, which is pure madness we can see in searches. lots of false stalled cycles.


but when we switch to seneye, or, we take years to study what 1000+ seneye posters have uploaded to the web, new rules simply emerge due to stark patterns on file.

that thread above was built solely on using updated cycling science.

ways to expand the rule of lost/gained bacteria and still keeping a reef tank in balance:

the live rock surface area is what runs the tank. on any reef here, any reef tank on any web site in the world, we can instantly remove 100% of their sand and not put any back, and the cycle wont crash.

before removing that sand, we could also install 5 brand new canister filters = massive surface area and bacteria, and let them seat into full cycle ability, and instantly remove all 5 of those seated-in filters along with the sand, and a seneye still won't show any loss of ability.

live rock surface area is so powerful, we could also remove 50% of the live rock and the tank still won't crash :)

we did that several times above (because they wanted to change from a rock pile to an NSA clean aquascape {barely any live rock use} all at once)

old cycling science could never ever do the jobs we do daily above, that's over 2 mil $ worth of uncrashed reef tanks/still growing with weekly new jobs.

 

[exnisstech]

I've done it before. Suck the old sand out with a hose so it doesn't get stirred up. Then add new sand after rinsing it well. I pour the new sand into a funnel that goes into a pvc pipe that way I can guide it around the tank bottom as I have someone else pouring it in. I only did it because I wanted larger grains. Not something I would do for any other reason. I'm all barebottom now.

 

[brandon429]

DPV please ask your friend where he got that swap idea/curious to know the reach of that thread or the tenets in it