Sand from old tank

[cy88]

Hi all,

I have just moved all my live stocks (2 clown, CC starfish, hermit crabs) to my new tank. My question is, should I slowly move all the sand from my old tank (20G) to my new tank (75G)?

I am planning to clean out the 20G and use it as a QT.

Thanks,
Chris

[Capt_Cully]

I'd put new sand in and add a cup of the old sand to it to seed it. Then I'd pitch the rest.

[loyalrogue]

Did you cycle the new tank completely?
If it's cycled then there's no need to "seed" the new sand as it's already established nitrifying bacteria colonies from the cycling process.

Of course I would go ahead and add the old sand anyway because there's a ton of microfauna (worms, pods, stars, snails, etc.) that are still living in it.
If you're worried about adding to much detrius to the new tank, you could rinse the old sand with fresh SW first.

I normally take a 5gal bucket put some old sand (1/3 to 1/2 full), put enough SW to cover the sand by 4-6 inches, mix it around using rubber gloves, then pour off the nasty water.
You won't be able to remove it all, but if you do this a couple of times it will remove alot of the fish poop and waste that's trapped in the old sand without killing the beneficial critters.

***Important Tip: If you decide to do this make sure you wear gloves. When we moved our 125g to the other side of the room I took the opportunity to rinse the sand. I didn't use gloves and every scratch on my hands from the LR ended up getting infected from the detrius. They burned for 2 days before the triple antibiotic ointment killed the infections.

HTH

[lloydkeller]

dONT THROW THAT OLD SAND OUT,would be a waste theres to much life there you need

[kevin2000]

If you have placed a substrate in the new tank .. I would probably just toss the sand. Can't be much in your 20 to begin with and adding sand to a stocked tank is a PIA and stressful to the livestock. Further .. if the sand is old enough its likely to be loaded with phosphates and create additional problem. May not be worth the trouble.

[cy88]

I have already seeded a few cups of it after the tank was completely cycled.

I think I will just throw the rest out in case it cause problems.