Tank upgrade, best way to remove substrate?

[Reef Breeders Verified Sponsor]

Im upgrading my 45 to a 75 next week, and one of my biggest problems will be the removal or sand. I have a shallow sand bed, so it shouldnt take too long to scoop, but I was thinking about using a gravel cleaner, because it will suck up the smaller sand of the bottom lay, but drop the top layer back into the tank. Any other ideas?

 

[Jcr's Reef]

I use a net so I can sift the detritus out before transferring it, but that depends if your leaving your livestock in there or not.

 

[Anthony Calfo]

it depends on how shallow is shallow. If its under 1" total, just drain as much clear undisturbed water from the tank as you can store in buckets or the like. Then slowly romove rock and coral. And lastly, with only enough water to cover the backs fo the fishes, catch them gently and easily in the low water (versus stressful trapping ni deeper water with rocks that can scratch, etc).

In those remaining few inched of muddier water (now that all fish, rock and inverts have been removed) you can stir the sand, decant the muddy water and use a clean dust pan to scoop the sand out.

Put wet sand in the dry new tank first, then pump or fill gently (spilling or pumping new water into a bucket that fills and overflows so as to not milk up the tank).

if you have deeper sand, same as above but only stir the top 1" of sand, drain and then scoop the sand off in layers (top 1, second 1", third 1" etc) and return in proper order to the new tank to minimize die off of faculties in the living sand at depth.

 

[butts182]

i recently had a trank crash and i think it was becaused i used all new sand, so when you drain the tank and realize that the sand doesn't look good...it's ok...just reuse it and add some new sand since you are going to a bigger tank.

 

[Reef Breeders Verified Sponsor]

Well the upgrade is mostly over ( I need to build a canopy) and I simple removed the top layer first, then the finer sand on the bottom, which I then added to the 90 gallon. It came with two 3/4 full 5 gallon buckets of live sand, so I have a nice 3" sb, which my haddoni practically buried himself in.