changing out crushed coral

[Nihoa]

hows this for a mess: our tank was bought already established and had only 2 ocellaris clowns in it and about 40 pounds of crushed coral. great filter but rarely cleaned, no clean up crew, no skimmer, not much of anything but a few fake plants. we looked at it as a fixer-upper and had no idea the problems that were going to be associated with trying to turn this tank around.

one big problem is that there is 2 years of crud settled down into the crushed coral that clouds the water everytime its disturbed and that spikes our ammonia like crazy. i want to switch out the crushed coral for sand and wonder how i go about doing this.

we now have 40ish pounds of live rock in the tank which has been in there at least a month. if i pull the water out and the liverock, put it and all my inverts & fish in a bucket, can i dump the crushed coral and replace it with plain aragonite? not livesand but plain sand?

[Rbacchiega]

I had to drain and buff out scratches on two of my friends acrylic tanks...here's what I did:

Drain the tanks and keep as much as the water as possible, I used rubbermaid tubs, but each tank was 120, so yeah. If you've got some powerheads, place one in every container. It shouldn't take you too long to change out the sand, so I wouldn't worry about heaters. Place the live rock and any corals in one tub and the fish in another.

Use a dustpan (a brand spankin new one) to take out all the crushed coral. This is now your fish dustpan!

Put your live rock back in and scape it as you wish (the tank is still without water at this point) Add sand. It will take longer, but I put it in by hand or using a cup, that way you can fill around the rocks. Go with rocks first to avoid any unwanted settling. Fill with water left over from the bin that had the live rock and coral. Add fish and the water from their bucket and top off.

Hope this helps

[Madreefer]

Originally Posted by Rbacchiega

I had to drain and buff out scratches on two of my friends acrylic tanks...here's what I did:

Drain the tanks and keep as much as the water as possible, I used rubbermaid tubs, but each tank was 120, so yeah. If you've got some powerheads, place one in every container. It shouldn't take you too long to change out the sand, so I wouldn't worry about heaters. Place the live rock and any corals in one tub and the fish in another.

Use a dustpan (a brand spankin new one) to take out all the crushed coral. This is now your fish dustpan!

Put your live rock back in and scape it as you wish (the tank is still without water at this point) Add sand. It will take longer, but I put it in by hand or using a cup, that way you can fill around the rocks. Go with rocks first to avoid any unwanted settling. Fill with water left over from the bin that had the live rock and coral. Add fish and the water from their bucket and top off.

Hope this helps

+1 I've done it this exact way probably 4 times now with no problems at all.

[Nihoa]

thank you both very much. so when i put my water back if i go very slowly and pour onto a plate rather than direct onto the sand will it at least reduce cloudiness? with sand do you get a lot of suspended particles or is it heavy enough that it settles rather quickly?

and i also wonder about spikes. i should have enough bacteria in the tank on my live rock that the sand should start any crazy cycling?

[Rbacchiega]

It'll still be cloudy for a couple hours, but not to the point where it should harm the fish. And because you are using nearly all of your already established water you wont have to worry about too much of a spike (if any)

I usually just use some of the live rock to pour the water over....