is it possible for live sand to be cleaned-replaced- in a running tank?

[reef4life!!!]

Hi everyone and happy new year!!! I have a 65 gallon tank with live rock and live sand which is running for 7-8 years.So i am trying for the past 3 months to lower down my dang phosphates in order to get some corals and they don't seem to come down.My nitrates went down from 80 to 2-5ppm and they for the past 2 months are stable at that range. I've tried nitraphos(auquaforest) 50% water change at the begging, last month i placed phosguard(seachem) inside my canister filter and 5 days ago i started microbacter clean too.My question is could i remove-or replace - the whole sand(or at least as much as i can without disrupting the rocks) and clean in order to release any nitrates-phosphates the sand has?

*i use salifert test kits*


current setup:
1 eheim canister filter with mostly ceramics and 2 sponges
1 deltec mc600 hang on skimmer
live rock
live sand(i don't remever correctly but i thing it's aragonite)
tank is running for 7-8 years(poorly maintenance)

Current livestock: (i added the clowns almost 2 months ago and the rest of the fish 1 month ago, because i lost all my previous fishes from ich)
1 carpenteri wrasse
2 occelaris clowns
1 female meleagris
1 small japonicus

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Yeah the question is if i have to add more than 50%, let's say 60% of new water, is it ok if i match the salinity and temp with my old SW??? The last 1/2 of the water will go down the drain for sure so i don't think i will use it for rinse.I will probably just use tap water and the final rins with RODI

Also my lighting setup is 2 T5's which i don't have a controller to control when the lights are off and on, so if i am guessing right you mean to open for like 2-3 hours first day and each day increase by 1 hour?

I would say at the 75% new salt water mark it would be rough but having salinity and temperature match is enough to eliminate stress. If your only coral is gsp then you don’t have to worry about alk/calcium swings which is good. For lighting you are right, just reduce photo period and increase by an hour a day. I went from like 12 hours of lighting to 7 after mine. Back to normal after 4 days.

 

[reef4life!!!]

I would say at the 75% new salt water mark it would be rough but having salinity and temperature match is enough to eliminate stress. If your only coral is gsp then you don’t have to worry about alk/calcium swings which is good. For lighting you are right, just reduce photo period and increase by an hour a day. I went from like 12 hours of lighting to 7 after mine. Back to normal after 4 days.

Alright a few more questions as i am very new to all of theese ...I always making my 10% WC the exact time when i start pulling out the water.I use 2 10liter buckets,i wait till the bucket goes to half and i start adding the salt and by the time my water hits the 10liter marker the salt is ready(ussually all this process takes about 25-30 mins).My question is if i make my new water the same time i finish rinsing the sand would i be ok? And i think the last question is,can i place the rocks in the tank first then add the sand and after all of these start filling the tank with water??? I ask that because this process is gonna take like 10-20 minutes so if i put the rocks first in the tank they will be out from water for about 10-20 minutes

Edit* another question haha,sorry for all of these questions. So how do i rinse the sand? do i just pull the whole sand in to a bucket,fill it with some tap water and wash the sand in the bucket and after a little bit empty the water and just put fresh tap and repeat until the sand is crystal clear??

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

I would suggest premixing the salt water every time and might require you to buy another bucket or two... Keeping the rocks wet and submerged is critical as you will lose the bacteria in the sand when you rinse it and the rocks replenish it. Kinda confused at the post but you English is better than my Greek so I can’t complain. Hope that answered it!

 

[reef4life!!!]

I would suggest premixing the salt water every time and might require you to buy another bucket or two... Keeping the rocks wet and submerged is critical as you will lose the bacteria in the sand when you rinse it and the rocks replenish it. Kinda confused at the post but you English is better than my Greek so I can’t complain. Hope that answered it!

ok i got the answer for the salt mixing.Yeah sorry if my english are bad, in my head they make sense but apparently they don't make sense to you .
Last questions was:
1)Should i add the sand, add 50-60 liters, then put the rocks inside and after placing the rocks fill the rest of the tank with water or is it something else?
2)The last (i hope it's last haha) question is how do i rinse the sand.Do i just put all the sand in my 10liter bucket and fill it with tap water and repeat every 5-10 mins or you guys do this in another way

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Exactly right. You might need a large plastic spoon to stir it around and be prepared for a bad smell! Rinse your rocks off fairly well and give em a good shake to remove detritus buildup

 

[reef4life!!!]

Exactly right. You might need a large plastic spoon to stir it around and be prepared for a bad smell! Rinse your rocks off fairly well and give em a good shake to remove detritus buildup

Ok then thank you so much for you help,sorry if you didn't understand my english. I really thought i was good,turns out i really need to start using the language more often!!!

 

[reef4life!!!]

What I'm seeing from these pictures and the description you're giving is a tank that likely has a lot of phosphate bound to the rock after many years of high nutrients in the tank. Scrubbing them won't solve it and it's unlikely that neither will taking a dramatic action like replacing all of your sand bed. That may accomplish _some_ reduction in bound PO4, but it'll also decimate any population of benthic invertebrates you have living in the sandbed if that's of any concern to you.

Releasing years of bound PO4 is going to require something to bind PO4 continually over time. Water changes alone won't accomplish that, but a really simple way to do this would be to experiment with dosing small quantities of lanthanum chloride (Phosphate RX is a product I've used). You can dilute the dose you decide on into a cup of RO/DI water and slowly drip it into the neck of your protein skimmer. Doing this now and then over a few weeks will slowly bring your PO4 down.

Looking at your tank, I'd also suggest that you could probably use to beef up your cleaning crew. Some more snails and even a few urchins will probably help immensely with algae issues.

Lastly, keep in mind that lots of people have run successful reef tanks with phosphate levels similar to yours. You're more likely to harm corals by driving phosphate too low than having it too elevated so take it slow and ultimately focus on keeping it "middle-of-the-road" and stable rather than super suppressed.

Hi,i wanted to ask you a question about lanthanum chloride.I've seen people in videos using this product and i want to try the product myself.I can only find Phosphat-e from brightwell in my country, should buy it?

 

[biophilia]

Hi,i wanted to ask you a question about lanthanum chloride.I've seen people in videos using this product and i want to try the product myself.I can only find Phosphat-e from brightwell in my country, should buy it?

It should be fine to use. I've not used it, but it's almost certainly just dilute lanthanum chloride. If you go that route, remember that it's best to start slow. Start with maybe 10% of the recommended dose on the bottle's instructions and go from there. Stripping phosphate too fast is going to to do more harm than good anyway.

Only dose directly into a filter -- not into the tank itself as it will cause a bit of precipitate which can get in the gills of fish if dosed directly into the tank. The easiest way I've found is to take whatever dose you decide, dilute it into some RO/DI water and very slowly add it directly into the neck/bubbles of your skimmer over the course of an hour or two.

Then wait 24 hours and test PO4 again, and re-evaluate from there. If you test PO4 immediately after dosing, the lanthanum phosphate flocs floating in the water column may skew your test results.

 

[reef4life!!!]

It should be fine to use. I've not used it, but it's almost certainly just dilute lanthanum chloride. If you go that route, remember that it's best to start slow. Start with maybe 10% of the recommended dose on the bottle's instructions and go from there. Stripping phosphate too fast is going to to do more harm than good anyway.

Only dose directly into a filter -- not into the tank itself as it will cause a bit of precipitate which can get in the gills of fish if dosed directly into the tank. The easiest way I've found is to take whatever dose you decide, dilute it into some RO/DI water and very slowly add it directly into the neck/bubbles of your skimmer over the course of an hour or two.

Then wait 24 hours and test PO4 again, and re-evaluate from there. If you test PO4 immediately after dosing, the lanthanum phosphate flocs floating in the water column may skew your test results.

ok, i have the deltec mce600 skimmer,in which chamber do i put the product.?Also when you say to dillute the product you mean something like 1mL per 1liter of water?

 

[biophilia]

You can add it either directly into the intake of the pump on your skimmer, or into the bubbles at the neck of the collection cup while it's running which is how I've always done it (and I'd argue might be a little safer since there's less change the precipitate will make it back out and into your display). In your case, that would be right into this section:

Looking at the directions for Phosphate-E, ~15ml of that product brings 1.0ppm phosphate in 60 gallons of water down to zero. To go safe and slow, you could start by adding 1ml of product to 1 liter (or even just 1/2 or 1/4 liter would be totally fine if you don't want to add too much freshwater) and dose it slowly. Lots of people do this with a drip set up with some airline tubing, but I've always just used a small pipette and squirted a little in at a time over the course of an hour or two. Doesn't really matter how you do it, just as long as it's a little at a time. Dumping the whole liter in at once probably wouldn't hurt anything, but it won't be in contact with enough tank water to precipitate out the phosphate effectively.

Each dose of 1 ml of the product will bring your PO4 down by 0.1ppm, but keep in mind that phoshate bound to the rock and sand will leach back into the water to reach equilibrium as it's removed. So it may take more than 9ml to bring your PO4 from 1.0ppm to 0.1ppm. If you're finding it's not dropping quickly enough, there's no harm in trying a little more. Maybe 3ml every few days. Just take it slow and monitor over time so you don't shock anything or cause too much precipitation. Hope that helps and good luck!

 

[reef4life!!!]

Ok,thanks for the help!!!