help removing my sand

I need to remove my sand in my 55 reef(still up and runing) and rinse and reuse it in my new 210.it is about 3inches deep and 2 yyears old.I have tons of nas snails and a leopard wrasse mixing it up but im still worried about it releasing toxins.I have amquil on hand and 400ish gallons of available fresh saltwater for water changes and rinsing the sand....any ideas?

Its the pacific reef sand from carribisea aka expensive lol and im pretty tapped from the rest of the build so im gonna reuse to save some greenbacks.

 

if you leave it in 5 gal buckets for a few hours, maybe the creatures (snails,etc) will come up to the surface.. take them out and then rinse the sand. either way you rinsing or not rinsing the sand you will be releasing nitrates. the big skimmer will help.

 

Im thinking mabe gravel vac it in the 55 then scoop it and ill just rinse it in sw ...the critters will be ok they're pnly gonna cover a thin layer in the new tank

 

Go to Home Depot (or similar) and buy 4 or 5 feet of 1" I.D. clear tubing. The nassarius will handle the ride just fine. I woudn't siphon your wrasse though. You are going to have to replace the water in the tank obviously because the water will come out with the sand.

 

Siphoning is the best way to go but I would do it little by little over a week or 2 so you arent releasing everything in the sand into the tank in one shot. Take some out and let the tank levels settle between each batch.

Just how I would go about it.

 

I was thinking that but if I gravelvac it out real good there shouldn't be much left in it anyway...im probably going to haveto spacd it out anyway bc silly me didn't push the rocks into the sand soo ill have to do it section by sectionn and lower the rrocks evenly. Im not 100% sure but I think the gravelvac should cleann out the crud annd also suck out any gas pockets that may be in there aswell.

 

If the hose of the gravel vac is big enough, that might work. When upgrading a customers tank, we just use a standard wet/dry vacuum. (There was one that has never been used for leaks on the floor...in fact, it usually remained in the maintenance van).

 

Let me try and rephraise lol sry guys my brains a bit fried 3 dayys no sleep loll....im thinkn to use the gravelvac to clean the sand in the tank so less nastties/ harmful gasses will be released when. I remove it.I just don't want to harm my coral/fish.

 

If you work slowly, yes most of the gases and gunk will be vacuumed out, and that should work just fine. I second the motion to do it in small sections, as you will also be disturbing the well-established bacterial colony.

 

honestly its a huge risk to stir up existing sand even little toxin in the tank will throw levels off i just switched my tank to my 50 gallon Bowfront trust me you will kill your fish if you disturb the sand and the levels spike. but if you choose to do so i would suggest setting up a hospital tank just in case of a level spike. my ammonia and nitrates both shot up really fast when i disturbed my sand so i decided to say forget it and bought new it was expensive but all my livestock survived the move crabs snails and fish.