Doin' a re-scape this weekend and I've got some questions...

[ScubaSteve]

It's finally reached the point where my corals are starting to grow into one another and I feel a re-scape is in order to give them more room to grow. I also feel it's time to try something different and work with a different design... one that is better planned than what I have now.

The tank has been in its current form for almost 1 year to the day when I last moved. I am having some concerns about moving the rocks around and stirring up the sand.

Should I be worried about stirring up the sand and unleashing "who-knows-what"? I am expecting a small cycle from this but will disturbing the sand exacerbate this?

Can I remove the rock and drain as much of the water as possible without disturbing the sand, then give the sand a bit of a stir and rinse?

I am having a bit of a FW outbreak since my mandarin died a few months back, so there hasn't been anyone to keep them in check. I'll be keeping the LR in water during the re-scape, but should I be concerned with FW die off and subsequent toxin release?

If I remove my rock without exposing it to air, do you think I'll be able to preserve some or all of the sponge fauna?

I've got my own answers to a lot of this but am not 100% sure and am looking for a concensus.

[Millepora_Maniac]

HI Scuba,

I just set up a new 180 and I thought it would be best to "Nuke" all of the rock to eliminate Majanos, aptasia, and FW or any other parasites. I rinsed alll of my old sand and nuked the rock, then added everything into the new tank.
All the spoonges died right away, but somwhow the majanos lived.

Anyhow, i kept on going, and now everything looks li=fine, it took about a month before i could run my lights around 8 hours, just because of the die off etc. My skimmer just reeks right now, but not as bad as when i first set the tank up.

I i were you i would be leary of killing off anything on the rock, but at the same time, it is hard to create awesome looking rock structures with wet living rock.

If you want to save sponges, just try to tear off some good chunks and then put them in your sump, as for the FW, i wouldn't worry too much, just run a bunch of carbon for the first while.

Good Luck!!

[ScubaSteve]

Thanks dude! Ya, I was kind of thinking the same, minus nuking the rocks. I have a lot of very encrusted corals that are starting to reach the "epic" stage... Now that I think of it, almost all of the epic corals came from you!

I think I'll bite the bullet and give the sand a good do-over today and just minimize how much of that funky water gets back into the tank.

I am going to try realllllly hard to minimize die off. I'm just prayin I don't get a major cycle... That would suck...

I'll post pics of the new design tonight. Wish me luck! :P

[Millepora_Maniac]

Is there any way that you could set up a temporary tank with the water from yours near it? Then just put the colonies in there for a little bit and do your rockwork.