Moved My Tank Yesterday, Is My Sandbed Dead?
 

Yesterday I moved my 29 gallon tank. I have a 2-3" sandbed and about 15 corals. I emptied the contents of the tank into two 25 gallon rubbermaid containers. I left about .5 inch of water in my tank so my wife and I could carry it out of the apartment and into our new house. Here is my question. I have not put the water or corals back into the tank. They still sit in the rubbermaids. I have my lights and skimmer over the rubbermaid with the corals & liverock in it, and my fish are in the other rubbermaid.

What should I do at this point? The tank smells pretty bad right now, I think its from things in my sandbed dying. I tried to pull out all of the snails and hermit crabs. Should I siphon out the remaining water and top layer of sand? Or should I just begin pumping the water from the rubbermaids back into the tank? Im so scared I may have screwed up by not keeping more water in the main tank and leaving a heater in it.

Help!

Thanks in advance.

I know that when I moved my tank, the sand bed got stirred up pretty good. I thought everything was fine, but there was enough disruption that it started another cycle. The cycle was mild, but I did lose a fish from it.

To be safe, I would let the tank sit for 3 or 4 days and monitor the parameters.

edit: btw, your avatar is amazing. Did you make it yourself?

Personally, I'd go with a new sandbed. Just, make sure to monitor the parameters in the rubbermaid with the livestock ,while waiting for the new sand to settle... Not to say that your old sandbed isn't going to be ok, this is just what I would do...



Matt

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by tangwang [/i]
[B]Personally, I'd go with a new sandbed. Just, make sure to monitor the parameters in the rubbermaid with the livestock ,while waiting for the new sand to settle... Not to say that your old sandbed isn't going to be ok, this is just what I would do...



Matt [/B][/QUOTE]


tangwang:
interesting. I'd like to hear what others have to say. I really dont want to suck out my entire sandbed. Id rather go with a barebottom type of plan if I have to do that.

btw, I love YOUR avatar. I love that beer...speaking of it I think I will have one now!



Jedimike: Thanks for the comment. I kind of made the avatar. I edited out the goldfish and added a clownfish :-)

anyone?

Get rid of the sand. If stirred too much it can be toxic to the fish and inverts. Just get some new sand (shouldn't be too hard for 29g), and use the water from the bucket that has the least amount of sand in it.
Some friends have re-used thier sand beds, others I know lost thier fish. I think it is better to be safe than sorry. I moved my 75 gal and survived with only 40 gallons, and everyone made it. As long as you have 50% of the original water you should be fine.

thanks mraafat....

so i should assume my sandbed is dead and re-seed it with sand from a fellow reefer. Sounds good.

The live rock you have will re-seed the sand in due time. No need to worry so much about getting some live sand from a reefer. I would focus more on getting everything set up; heating, skimming, water changes. Good luck, and let me know how things turn out.

Listen to the voice of experience! Use new sand or kiss your favorite fish goodbye. Serious spikes/cycling will occur by moving that much sand.

Lost my original Yellowtail damsels when I just "up and moved" my DSB.

[i]My, that is a nice avatar. [/i]

well, i didnt move my sandbed.....the sand never left the tank. Its still there. Maybe I didnt clarify that. I moved the entire 29 gallon tank with the sand and just a little bit of water in it.

So wont I have a cycle with the new sandbed? How soon till i can start adding my corals back to the tank?

Don't get rid of the old sandbed--just wash it THOROUGHLY with saltwater. It will take a long time to get most of the detritus out, but if your sandbed is very old, that's a small price to pay for keeping a good portion of your sandbed creatures alive.

We moved our 29g with our DSB in it (and with just a little bit of water over it). After we got it to the new house, we added the water back in (did about a 25% water change) and added a bunch of new live rock we'd bought.

Our corals, anenome, and fish were in a cycled 40g FOWLR that hadn't been stocked with fish yet, so we let them stay there for a day. After the tank had been running in its new location for a day, we added back in the corals and the anenome. And then we added the fish back in the day after that. Everything seems to be doing fine. The anenome (which is our bad-water-quality meter more than anything else we could use, including test kits) is doing just fine, is fully opened, and looking great.

So to review, we did the same move-type situation as you - let it run with only rock and sand for 24 hours - added the corals/anenome and let it run for 24 hours - then added the fish. Everything worked fine for us. But then again, we've had tremendous luck in this hobby so far. So maybe it wasn't supposed to work that way. Just letting you know what we did.

PS: We also have a 10g fuge hooked up to the tank, so that may have helped. But the fuge wasn't hooked back up into the same system as the tank until about 48 hours after we'd added the fish (took us a while to get the right replacement parts).

Don't put any sand in the tank go BB just clean the tank add your old clean water LR corals and fish and just add more new water.
next time you move the tank it will be much easier.