Dangers of Removing rock?

Any chance if I remove and rearrange my rock work that's almost nine months in would cause any kind of shock or kick start another cycle in my tank? When I clean my tank I don't siphon the sand at all, so im worried if too much stand is stirred up I may cause some unwanted problems. Any advice on this? My tank is a 75g, with over 110lb of rock. I dont have an exact amount of rock I want to take out, I just want a smaller, more simple aqua scape in the middle of the tank.

 

as long as it doesnt dry out it should have much die off....best bet is to put in a tuppereware with water and move little by little and swap them in and out of tupperware thats how i did it with my scape and there wasnt any problems

 

you should be ok, just go slow and try not to disturb the sandbed, how much sand do you have in the tank?

 

removing live rock from established substrate may cause problems.

I'm only talking about the rocks that are "in" your substrate.

It's not the rock, it's the idea of "disturbing" the substrate. You can stir up all kinds of nasties - particularly if your substrate isn't routinely moved around (either by you or adequate critters).

Try to minimize moving the bottom rocks and absolutely make sure all flow is turned off before you start and after you finish moving things make sure it all settles before you turn flow back on.


Having said that, 9 months isn't very old and I doubt you have that much nasty accumulated in there. And if the substrate is shallow (<2 in) it's less of a concern.

Either way, take it slow with flow off. Have a separate bucket of SW (old water change water would work) to dip the rocks and shake them to get the debri off. Don't do that in your DT.

Good luck

P

 

I only have about 2 inchs,so ill try to keep the disturbance to a minimum!

Thank you!!

 

Yeah my sub is about 2 inches, ill just take it a rock at a time.

Thanks!

Larry

 

Thanks!!

 

I just did this tonight with my tank! Redid everything from rocks to corals. Like said it can cause issues when debris from the rocks and the sand gets stirred up. I did a 25% water change right after I finished rockscaping to help get the junk out of the water!

 

Good call on the water change, wont be too much stress on the fish you think?

 

well moving them around would be so stressful they probably wouldnt even notice the water change plus itll bring the ammonia etc from the stress down