Thinking About Shutting Down

[dare2dv8]

I hate to admit it but I'm contemplating shutting down my tank as life has just turned too busy to really enjoy the hobby. I plan on picking it back up in the future so I'm not sure how to proceed...

I'm not decided if I want to sell the whole works or just the livestock and store everything else for future use someday.

If I was to keep tank, sand, and live rock does anyone have any experience/advice on how to properly store it. I have about 140 lbs of live rock which of course can be kept in tank - but I'm sure it's going to smell something awful. How long will it smell bad? I want to keep it in the garage but I have to keep all my family members happy at the same time. Sand would probably fill 3-4 five gallon buckets - anything I should know about storing the sand?

Any helpful suggestion would be most welcome.

[reefwars]

would personally toss your sand and start with fresh sand , cleaning it is a hassle and adding it will surely cause nutrient sinks:)

cheers

denny

[Coral Hoarder]

boil and leave your rock in freash water is best for geting it not to smelly
i would start with new sand dont keep the old stuff

[Dez]

I shut down for about 4 years. I stuck all of my live rock, well over 100lbs, in a smaller frag tank and just ran a pump and salt water in it for the full 4 years. It was in my basement out of the way in a corner. I had a float valve hooked up for top off straight to the city water. I didn't have heat in it. Then after 4 years I set up my tank with that rock and it is still great. My current tank is a full blown sps tank with no issues at all and it's been running for 4.5 years now.

[asylumdown]

+1 to the idea of tossing the sand. It's really not worth it to try and keep IMO.

As for storing the rock, I'd look in to ways of stripping rock like a bleach and muriatic acid treatment. After a process like that there wouldn't be anything left on it to smell, and you could just let it dry and store it in a box. You'd get the added benefit of that rock being good to go and free of organic material that could rot when you decide to set the tank back up again.

[crackedcorn]

I thought as long as sand was rinsed really well it could be re-used with no problems?

[hfp75]

I've rinsed mine and reused it.... Took a bit to get it all out & wash it but no problems.... Then I topped up with some more new stuff....

[crackedcorn]

That's what I plan to do, what's the easiest way to rinse clean sand??

[hfp75]

I put it all in a salt bucket.... put a garden hose in all the way and turned it on.... then stirred it with my hand until the water overflowing was clean.... I lost a bit of sand but the goal was to stir it with my hand and not use enough water force to flood out all the sand.

some might say then it needs to be dried and rinsed again, ect ect... but I put it back in and didnt have any issues.....

saved me 3 sacks of sand.... used one to top it up after.... and the water was cheep....

this was done durring a tank move and the tank water & livestock wasnt exposed to the sand removal.... this preocess can stirup some not so nice (toxic) stuff into the water column.