Sand Add Project - Documented w/ Pics

I know a few people were talking about going sand, hope this helps you along the way.

Here are some aftermath pics of my sand add project. You can see my before pics here...

Step 1: Moved all my LR to the left side of the tank. After I moved it all my fish took up strategic hiding positions, they knew dad was messing around again.

Step 2: Scooped all the LR into a strainer in the tank and slowly dumped it into a styrofoam container. After each load I sifted through to make sure no snails or hermits were inadvertently removed. I left a little CC on the bottom right hand side. Not enough to see but enough to take up some space below the visual line of the tank. Filled the styro with some tank water and moved to a storage location, room temp.

Step 3: Poured sand into a small bowl (I bought the no rinse agronite sand). Lower sand gentle to bottom and dump slowly to fill in the bottom. Added 40 lbs of LS in all.

Step 4: Used my feeding tongs to even out to low spots.

Step 5: Waited for the dust to settle. Then did a 20% water change.


Step 6: Re-aquascaped. The right hand side I tried to get it right, the left hand side looks like garbage, but since I'm changing out the other half of the CC in two weeks might as well not get it nice only to mess it up. I'll probably end up re-scaping the whole thing now that I look at the pictures, but I'll wait so my babies can relax again.




Here's my clown giving me the finger for moving his BTA's rock.


Step 7: Almost forgot the most important step. I cleaned my canister filter media in tank water after it had pulled 90% of the silt out. It was messy in there.

I also checked my salinity this morning since I added the sand last night. It had risen from 1.025 to 1.026 so I topped off with approx 3 gallons of fresh RO/DI.

 

Good to know, i will be fdoing sdame thing in the next 7 days!

 

I'm adding 10lbs soon. I'm figuring on laying the bags down then cutting them and sliding them out from under the sand. Since I'm not taking any out, it should be fairly easy.

PS... love the clown pic!

 

You have to pay extra for the no rinse sand And the funny part is CaribSea rinses the sand then makes aragomight , aragomilk and purple up from the dust and the dust that most rinse out is very much needed for the new tank to spur coralline growth and help to stabilize the water parameters. Never rinse a good quality aragonite sand just dump it in dust and all.. It won't harm the animals either.

 

I had plenty of dust left over.

 

If you have the dust still ? I would put it in the tank where it can do some good. And with what you now have you need to watch it as it will need to be replenished over time as it will dissolve in to solution into the water.

 

The whole bag went in, dust and all. By dust I meant the silt/milky water after adding the sand.

Friday after next the other 40 lb bag goes in. Woohoo!

 

what did you actually use to scoop the CC?

 

A small old ceramic plate to slide under and scoop without kicking up too much debris.

 

I'd like to do this project myself as I'm tired of the CC, but still have a couple of questions. If you're taking out just about all of the existing bed (1/2 now, 1/2 a few weeks later), is there any danger in kicking up anything toxic deep in the existing bed to the fish? Also, with a change like with 1/2 now and 1/2 later, does it have to be live sand going in? How many pounds of sand would you recommend for a 55 gal tank? Thanks!