Replacing Sandbed

[FarmerTy]

I'm tired of looking at my dirty sandbed. I was an idiot and took my fine sand and mixed it with some fine crushed coral from old tank to seed it. Well now all the fine sand has settled to the bottom and these large pieces of non-white crushed coral keep getting sifted to the top. It looks horrible to me. I'd rather just have fine sand throughout the tank.

What's the consensus on removing sand from an established SPS/LPS tank and replacing it?

Do sections at a time? Do it all at once?

Another idea is to just use some sort of filter, like a mesh or sieve, and pull out all the larger pieces leaving just the fine sand. Only problem is that it will kick up all the stuff in the sand and probably end up being worse than just replacing it entirely.

Thoughts?

-Ty

[AquaJohn]

I think it depends alot on how deep the sand bed is if its under 2" deep I dont think there is much of a problem in stirring it up. I think the problem comes with deep sand beds that have gasses trapped in them that if stirred will release into the water and nuke the tank. Altho it will probly spike phosphates for a while because of all the trapped crap being released but I don't think its that big of a problem if you do a large water change after sifting it. If it was me I would do it in one shot so you dont have multiple phospate spikes.

I will be the first to admit I am not an expert and my be totaly wrong so might want to wait for others to chime in.

[(Bio)³]

I also have no clue about this but can tell you that I saw Hydro Innovations put 3 little horseshoe crabs into his 440 and they sifted the sand bed so much that it spiked his nitrates and phosphates, had to remove them from the tank. So I would think do it in small sections and it will eventually be done.

[jestep]

I would remove small sections over the course of a month or two, unless you can do a 100% water change in which case just get it all out. If the sand is very fine like oolite, you can have anaerobic zones with only an inch or two. Stirring up a bunch of hyfdrogen sulfide would be really bad.

[FarmerTy]

Thanks everyone for your input. It's only 2" of fine sand (not oolitic very fine). I may just divide the tank into thirds and remove it 1/3 at a time. I'm thinking of leaving the sand around the rock structure as I don't want my aquascaping to come crashing down. I think that would not be as big of a deal as the sand under rocks usually stays under rocks and I won't get as much of the large pieces being kicked up to the top of the sand layer.