Adding sand to an established tank

[rob2010]

My nano tank is about 5 yrs old is it ok to add a fresh bag of sand or is that not a good idea.

 

[brandon429]

You should rip out all the old sand and replace it with new instantly, says a very old nano already doing that so many times

Whether you even use sand or go bare bottom doesn't matter, it's that you can go as slow or as fast as you want, the design is right below for both options. I wouldn't install new sand on top of detritus sand that's for sure

Congrats on 5 yr nano that's 5% zone few make 5 nice going


http://reef2reef.com/threads/the-of...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

 

[rob2010]

Will it mess with what I already have in the tank? Just want to make sure I don't kill anything off or the wife will knock meoff :)

 

[rob2010]

You should rip out all the old sand and replace it with new instantly, says a very old nano already doing that so many times

Whether you even use sand or go bare bottom doesn't matter, it's that you can go as slow or as fast as you want, the design is right below for both options. I wouldn't install new sand on top of detritus sand that's for sure

Congrats on 5 yr nano that's 5% zone few make 5 nice going


http://reef2reef.com/threads/the-of...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

Thank you for the great info! Do you reccomend what type of substrate I should use?

 

[tiggs]

The only thing I would tack on is that if you're going to fully replace the substrate with all new, I would highly recommend doing a large water change immediately after. This is especially true if you don't vacuum your current sand bed regularly and have been that way for 5 years. The reason behind this is that all kinds of detritus gets trapped in an unvacuumed sand bed and stirring the entire thing up during removal could make levels toxic and cause a mini cycle.

Personally, I'm a bit old school and always go either bare bottom or a shallow sand bed, then rely solely on my CUC to stir it up gently. I actually had a DSB back in the early 2000s, but those have fallen out of favor in most circles. You'll find some people that constantly clean their sand and others that have a similar strategy to mine and go the natural route. Different strokes for different folks.