Lot of good information from all you folks. It’s much appreciated. Could I get away with using dry sand? Not sure if I can even find it as lost LFS have live sand now a days.

Sand types
 

My thought on sand dry or live get the grain you want.
Order it from lfs because you going to need a lot .
Dry sand is a good start because the Bactria you add will be
Dominate.
Funny thing with ocean stuff it can dry out for years add water
And it comes to life.
For ease to buy I would just go to Big Als ,Aquarium Illusions
And buy what they have (Carib Sea) it’s a good product.

Ok well that works. I was planning on going to AI as they carry the Carib sea argonite which I’m currently using. I like this grain as I haven’t had an issue with it blowing around in the high flow areas. I believe they are all sold as live sand though in the plastic bags. Online vendors have some different dry sand options but the shipping would be as much as the bag of sand.

Just remember AI will price match anywhere in Canada so double check the prices before you buy. ;)

Awesome! I will look in to that.

Don't start it with sand. You can always add it later, and you'll have a far easier time starting the tank bare bottom.

Starting bare bottom is definately your safest option.

I recommended using as much old water as possible as this will, in my opinion, cause the least amount of stress to your corals.
Whatever new water you need to use, make sure you test and dose it first to get the big 3 matching your old water - Alk, Ca and Mag. And aerate it well to off-gas the CO2, bringing the pH up. I do this overnight as it's part of my routine before a WC.
I use a Maxijet breaking the surface for this.

Hey you’ve been following my tank transfer, right? Now you know what NOT to do :lol:

Anyway, best thing for me was being able to run both tanks side by side for a while so I could move a few things over to start it off. I guess I’m in the minority here in that I wanted to keep my sand. I moved some over to help seed the bit of new sand, and then the rest of the sand on transfer day I swirled around & rinsed in the old tank (after livestock was out) before taking it out by net. It was not a lot of work at all & settled quickly.

Anyway just wanted to wish you well on your transfer!

Ok well it seems that the safest is adding sand after the fact. A couple questions regarding this method:


1. How do I pour the sand evenly out of my bad without getting it all over my LR and corals?

2. How do I get the sand in all the tight spaces (caves, overhangs, tunnels etc).

3. How long do I have to wait before I can start adding sand?

4. Can I add my whole 1” sand bed at one time?

5. What bacteria additive should I add to the new tank?

when I moved my stuff from house to house I made sure not to interrupt the rock in the sand until I was had 90% of the water out and discarded the rest. i made sure to add a bottle of start-up bacteria and didn't add coral or fish until the tank was at temp in an effort to keep things less abrupt. in the end I didn't lose anything and it wasn't more than a week before things looked good again.
as for sand, I used all new sand adding just enough for my wrasses and then basically added the rest over a few weeks slowly in a Tupperware so It didn't dust my tank out completely.