Welcome to the first installment of ‘Ask Reef Builders’, a column where we’ll take some of your best questions and share our responses from which all our readers can learn. For years we’ve answered questions fielded through twitter, facebook and youtube comments, and now we’re happy to help even more of our readers and viewers get the most from their reef tanks.
“多年来，我一直关注您的视频。我需要一些建议。我将水族馆从65加仑升级到几周后的220坦克。我有一个沙床和活岩，我想带来多年来种植的所有有益细菌。任何建议如何清洁或杀死系统中可能存在的任何坏（即ICH），以便在我过渡时成为一个干净的系统。干杯。坦率”
Hi Frank and thanks for reaching out to us. Bacteria are the foundation of all successful ecosystems, rivers to reefs, planted tanks to reef aquariums. While we spend a lot of energy trying to cultivate biological filters in our reef tanks, counting on live rock and live sand to be their homes has a lot of potential drawbacks.
In years past we tried to encourage the entire reef to grow in our reef tanks, from the sand to the rocks, to all the little microbes and critters that help the ecology of natural reefs. But what we’ve learned is that bacteria are very tenacious life forms who will live in and on just about any surface available – this includes tank walls, tubing, and every nook and cranny of our corals too!
The problem with relying on live sand and live rock is that these substrates trap a LOT of detritus, unwanted food, bits of algae, and a whole lotta fish poop and coral slime. I firmly believe in a dedicated media/substrate for growing bacteria along the lines of Brightwell’s Bioblocks or other high surface area media which can be placed in the sump. This way you don’t have to worry about anything you do to the rock or sand affecting your biological filter.
Trust me on this, ‘preserving’ your carefully cultured live rock and sand, and transferring it to your new tank, will bring more problems than benefits. I suggest using some kind of porous ‘Bioblock’ in your current sump for several weeks to culture a dedicated biological filter, and once transferred to your new tank, use a dedicated biological innoculator like Prodibio Biodigest to boost the new biofilter.
Use this tank upgrade as an opportunity to cleanse your system of all unwanted pests, especially from the rocks, including any algaes, bubble algaes, hair algaes (especially矮胖），甚至海绵vermetid snails. This includes any unwanted polyps likemini blue anthelia和zoanthids您可能不希望在闪亮的新礁箱中越来越猖ramp。
As for the sand, I highly recommend at least starting outwithoutany sand – if you have to have sand just add it later, once the biological filter has reestablished using your biomedia and live rock, around one to two months after getting the tank fully running and rebalanced. You可以clean your existing sand but if you truly want to start your system nice and clean, you’re better off getting new sand as there’s innumerable ways that your ‘old’ sand could be locking up unwanted nutrients.
I wish you the best of luck in your new reef tank upgrade – the best advice anyone can give you is to do everything slowly, take your time, and enjoy the过程建立一个新的礁石。
