Changing Substrate

[Timur]

I know this is stupid but I dont like the way my sand looks. Also have some trouble with undesirable algea growing on it all the time. May be its the organic compound of the sand.

Anyway I would like to order aragonite sand but I dont know how to change an established sand bed with a new one.

I can take out the sand in front of the rocks (its hard to take all the live rocks out the tank, and corals) and replace slowly with the sand. I plan to age some of it inside my sump???

Second thought ; I can take out all the rocks and corals out of the tank, empty the sand and add the aragonite inch by inch

Which one ? Or any other ideas ? This is going to be hard...

[Alice]

What do you have in there now? Crushed coral? Silicate sand? The finer grained sand will sift down to the bottom if you add it over the CC.

You can take the old out in sections (well, sort of, it slides around!) and add the new, allowing several days between sections. This allows sand bed critters to move into the new sand. You can add the old stuff to your sump. You can also use clean nylon stockings or cheese cloth to make "softballs" of old substrate and place them in the tank to help seed the bacteria and handle some of the load until the new sand bed takes hold.

Just some more ideas to think about

Alice