Moving to new tank question

[jjwalker]

Hello,

I've had a 29 gallon tank for almost 2 years. My sand bed is about 3 inches with 30lbs of live rock. I'm planning on tranferring everything to a 29 biocube.

I'd like some opinions of using the old sand or getting new sand and seeding it with some of the old.

Is this safe or not?

Thanks

[lllosingit]

when you do the transfer just take some of your old sand and put it in a nylon stocking and hang it somewhere in the new tank or sump for a couple weeks or more. This will help seed the new sandbed with bacteria and critters.
Another thing you can do is hook up a hang on filter or if you have a filter with a bio wheel use it for a couple weeks to get it seeded then transfer it to the new tank.
You can reuse your old sandbed but if it's been setup very long it would be better to replace it.

[jjwalker]

I heard there might be a possibility of toxic gases is I mix up the sand bed, is this true?

[lllosingit]

Dr Ron Shimek said there is very little danger in that happening.
If you have a deep sand bed just skim up the top layer to use to reseed your new sandbed.

[northbay-reefer]

I just moved from my 180 gal to a 210 and what I did was using all new sand in the new tank and put some of the old sands in the fuge. If you have live rocks in the old tank and is reusing them then you have plenty of bacteria on the live rocks to reseed you new sand.

If you like to reuse the old sand then what I would do is 1 week before the change over, I would do a water change and vacum the old sandbed real good. Then next week when you do the actual change over, while siphoning the water into a bucket, cavum the sand again to let all of the sediment settle in the bucket before reusing the 2/3 of old water

Make sure to use atleast 2/3 of the old water so its like you are doing another large water change. Have alot of make up water ready to add to the new tank to make up the different in water loss.

After you are done, you probably need to feed less for a couple of weeks for your new tank bacteria to have a chance to recover.

[jjwalker]

Thanks for the info.