Transfering established live sand question

[pyro383]

Can a live established sand bed be partially moved from one tank to a new one? I have always heard about taking some sand to seed but what are the ramifications of disturbing the sand and releasing "nasties"?

[shyland83]

I have heard thats it can release nitrogen gases, but i've never actually heard anyone say they have had a problem with it. I moved a deep sand bed that was a little less than a year old and had no problems. I scraped off the top inch and kept it aside, then put that sand back on top when i was done.

[billsreef]

So long as you don't find pockets of real black anaerobic muck, there really is no worry ;) I've done what your talking about many a time, and so far I've never had a worse ramification than the tanks being cloudy for a day or two :)

[seldin]

I was thinking about this thread. I just got a lot of live sand from a fellow reefer. What I did was place it in my quarantine tub with heat and a pump.

I was thinking of letting it stay in there a couple of weeks. I figured there would be no harm in that.

I used to dump everything into my tank. However, at this point, almost everything goes into the tub. (I do wish I could say everything, but that's not the case).

However, for your application, since there is no wait time and your just transferring from one tank to another, it seems like a fine idea.

I am thinking that what you could have done was put your current live stock in a holding tub and then dump the live sand in the tank and wait until everything clears up.

Again, I don't see a big deal in just dumping it in. I myself, have dumped live sand from mail order straight in the tank, and it cleared up right away. Just thinking about the sand storm and maybe the corals may not like it.


PS. Just food for thought. I don't like this idea I am just giving a tidbit. At Country Critters they vacuum all their sand into a strainer and clean it out on a regular basis. To me, that's just killing all of the live stuff, so I don't do that.