Advice Needed, redoing rocks and sand

[Iron Orchid]

Greetings,

I have a 180 gallon tank I am going to redo with new rocks and sand, mostly because the rocks and sand I have in there seem to be going into a decline in terms of biodiversity, and I am having problems with algae and so on.

My question has to do with how best to maximize what biodiversity I do have. My plan was to remove a few rocks that I know have some little brittle stars and so on, and replace the rest.

My concern is that I am unsure of how best to keep what life I have left, and get rid of the rest of the bad stuff. Should I replace all the sand with the new live sand, or keep some back? I guess there isn't much I can do with or about the rocks, but I imagine at least some of the sand critters could be salvaged.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated, as I am very sure there are people who have torn down their tanks with the same goals in mind.

-Andrea

[rshimek]

Hi Andrea,

If the diversity is going down hill in the sediments, I would suggest you simply re-set the bed up. If this were my tank, and I could see some animals I wanted in the sediment, I would remove those to a shallow container. Do not put animals "saved" this way in a container with more than one inch of sand. I personally wouldn't move a lot of animals.

Then remove all of the old sand and discard it.

Then put the new sand in place. Once the system is set up again, add the critters from the container. This should not be more than a few hours after you started. Wait a week or two and add some live sand with sand dwelling animals in it, purchased from a reliable vendor. Do not purchase "bagged" live sand from a pet store, it isn't worth the gunpowder to blow it to hell.