moving a DSB
 

Hey everyone,

I'll be upgrading my tank from a 48 to a 90G in a few weeks (hopefully). I was just wondering about moving the sandbed. Can I just move it over and plunk it in, keeping the layers the same (ie. scrape out the top put it in a bucket then take out the bottom and put it in the tank with the top layer back on top?? Or should the bottom layer be rinsed to get rid of detritus??


TIA

Christy :)

Not sure fi this is the "right" answer, but I just scooped mine up with a dust pan and dumped it in the new tank. No apparent problems noticed afterwards.

That's pretty much what I've done when moving sandbeds and all seemed well afterward, too.

I removed all but an inch or so of water, scouped out the sand, and just got rid of the sludgy water that was left.

That is all I have ever done, and I might add that I have moved sandbeds a lot of times.

Great! Thanks everyone. Oh one more question. Did you do any water changes after the move to get rid of any crud in the water? Or did it just all settle out and absorb back into the DSB?

Christy :)

Water changes don't do very much to remove the crud, ime.

Using some kind of mechanical filtration with foam or polyester to trap the crud will remove quite a bit of it. Make sure to thoroughly rinse the foam or poly several times while the crud is still in the water column. You'd be amazed at how much crud you can pull out of a system that way.

Also, if you have a partial bucket of old water that you can spare, swish the LR in the old water before putting it back into the tank. All kinds of crud will dislodge from the rock. The water in your bucket will look like dirt when you're finished :eek:

Christy, all I did was add additional water to compensate for a larger tank. No filtration was required. My tank completely cleared up in about 12 hours. There is a lot of good bacteria on te "dirt", so removing it didn't seem like a good idea.

I agree that there's good bacteria on the dirt, however, the dirt has yet to decompose fully. There is a lot more bacteria in the relatively clean sandbed without the dirt, and the sandbed will not be decomposing.