Moving tank (Sand too?)

[Marksreef]

I’ll be moving a friends 55 G deep sand bed tank.
It’s aged a few years. Do I need to dump it and start over?
Draining all the way down to the sand is still going to disturb it very bad on the ride to new house.

 

[Katrina71]

New live sand

 

[Jon Fishman]

How far is the move? I would try to bucket all rocks and sand with water and take 25 or so gallons of straight tank water in buckets too and treat like a giant remodel/water change once moved. If the move is out of state etc, then tear down and restart fresh

 

[KrisReef]

If your friend wants to keep the sand then keep it. The trick is to totally rinse all the sand to remove detritus. A bucket in the driveway until the rinse water runs clear.

There is a thread on here about this, I don’t have the link,

 

[Mical]

+1 on new live sand (Carib, etc) Using old sand is asking for a major spike

 

[Fourstars]

Pound of old. rest new

 

[BZOFIQ]

IMHO: Either way; rinsed old or new - it has to be added to the tank in small batches over time after the move.

 

[CindyKz]

When I moved I tossed my sand and added fresh. My tank never looked so good.

 

[Jon Fishman]

I wish I had tossed the substrate..... Mostly because I would like a fine grain sand vs my current crushed coral, and now the task of changing it seems too tedious

 

[Marksreef]

Thanks.
I’m going to have to toss it.
It’s freezing out so no rinsing outside or time to do it.
It’s across town so I want it to go fast.
I’ll either bare bottom it and add cc later
Or new.

 

[brandon429]

pre rinse your new sand in the way mentioned, or suffer the storm for a long time, and each time thereafter a rock is shifted without calculation. you'd be amazed at the clouding examples we've collected from the dedicated non rinsers

rinse your new sand, and the answer is no it doesn't hurt nor sterilize it, it saves you from headache. if you don't rinse it, pls send us the new tank after shot to see how well you dealt w the new clouding and we can report that option in our sand rinse thread for future moves determined not to rinse in any way, its popular method for sure. the cloudless are the minority in all of reefing.