TheBChamp

I'm surely not all pro like Melev, ;-p but I believe since you can do the process fast (if you can) go to a sporting good store and get a few battery operated air pumps. (made for fish holding bin for bait). Leave a few inches of water in tank and drop one in to keep sand living. Put live rock and coral or separately in bin or ice chest and drop pumpkin there. Drop pum in all containers and things should be ok. If sand goes bad you will know because creature will normally come to surface for air if they are about to die. Just my thoughts! ;-)

HAT

Your sand will not go bad from a half hour without the pumps on, and i'm pretty sure the fish won't come to the surface as an indicator either. I would however get an air pump for your livestock bin since these moves normally take at least twice as long as you plan them to. Just remember that with even half of your water volume gone, providing it's a true 20 gallons of water, you are looking at 160 pounds not counting sand and the tank weight. So make sure you accurately accomodate for the true weight of the thing.

Not sure on the sand issue though. I would think cleaning the sand in RO water and then putting it back would be fine, but i'm not quite sure of the best option for you. Hopefully someone else with experience can chime in on this one.

When I last moved, I set up my current tank by transferring the LR & livestock from my old set up but seeded a fresh, new sand bed. I mixed 80% fresh saltwater on site and treated the entire process as though I was bringing the livestock and corals home from the fish store. I don't believe I encountered too much of a cycle, but keep in mind that I only had 2 fish at the time in a 58 gallon. All my corals survived and they are doing better than ever.

I suppose you will be fine so long as you keep your live rock submerged and feed very lightly thereafter.

A few things, first I didn't say fish will come to the top, I said critters like in sand critters. Critters will start to come out when they have lack of air. Surface of sand, Not water. And normally from take down to pumps up and running normally takes a while. And, I know all this from experience.

HAT

My mistake, you did not mention fish. As far as snails and hermit crabs/ other creatures are concerned, they really aren't going to come to the surface for air even if for a few hours or more with no circulation from the pumps. When you purchase snails and hermits online, they are shipped in zip-lock bags and left with little more than a wet paper towel to be shipped over the period of more than a day.

Critters, no name to critters, just critters. Lots of critters that make up live sand, that's why it's live.

Live sand refers to the bacteria that is present within the sand though and not any critters that may be within it.

Most live sand HAVE critters in it. And, if left witout pumps running for to long, they will die. That is what I was telling TheBChamp. That's All! WOW!!!

Hat. Just for my own curiosity what "critters" are you refering to. I am just trying to understand where you are coming from and your reasoning behind putting an air stone in the sandbed.

LOL!!!!!!!

I honestly was not trying to be funny. We are all here to help eachother out in understanding reef keeping. If you want to pick and choose who you take information from an be selective on what information you want to hear then you are only limiting your own knowledge and you are hurting other people who might have had a similar question and are afraid to ask or don't want to ask. Just something for you to think about next time you decide to not answer someones question.

I've got a couple of articles for you regarding moving your tank and the used sand bed:

http://www.melevsreef.com/moving_a_tank.html
http://www.melevsreef.com/rinsing_sand.html

I just recently broke down my 280g and I saved 7 salt buckets filled with the sand. I'm going to rinse it all out and have it ready to use in the new tank.

For your move, it would be great if you could have some saltwater already mixing at the new location. You never can have too much clean saltwater. When filling up your tank with sand, a big plastic bag, a platter or a bin / bucket lid works great to avoid stirring up the sand as water is poured or pumped into the aquarium.

Moving LR and livestock is easiest in clean trashcans. New ones ares strong, and have two handles for a helper to assist you move them into the new location. An air pump and airstone will keep the livestock in the barrel oxygenated while the tank is being set up. If you are anything like me, you will want to make small corrections on the new set up, and this takes time. The livestock may need a small heater to keep the temperature stable too.

HTH!

Woohoo Melev comes to the rescue!! Thanks man.

And its ok Lads I understood HAT when he mentioned creature or critters. Thank you everyone for taking the time to input your 2 cents!!

Thank you for understanding, I just posted to help ya! ;-)

I guess I just misjudged Hats ability to view anaerobic bacteria without a microscope.

Oh well....back to my tank to try to find those elusive sand bed critters. It's like trying to look for bigfoot. Some swear they have seen him, but in the end he really doesn't exist.

HTH

Well, since I'm blind it would actually be hard any way.

I know it's like beating a dead horse. But being blind, how do you see the "critters" coming to the surface starving for air?

EF

Iknow from past experience actually, been in this hobby for years. I use to be able to see.

Well your ability to change a tank over in a weekend and the five rocks in your new tank are a real testament to your reefing ability. Once I have years of experience I hope to be able to see bacteria and put five rocks in a 75 gallon tank

Good live sand, not the stuff in plastic bags that sits on shelves for months, has a lot more than bacteria in it. It has all sorts of tiny worms, baby brittle stars, small snails, pods and all the other stuff that feeds on that bacteria. Many of these are quite visible with the naked eye.

I moved a 20 gal tank with a shallow sand bed 4 years ago. I handled the sand by simply draining the tank down to the top of the sand bed and moving the tank with the sand in it. I didn't experience any cycling or crash or even algae blooms afterwards. But this was with only 1-1/2" of sand in a pretty small tank. I don't know how well that would work with a 40 gal with deep sand bed.

2 years ago I upgraded a tank I'd inherited from a 40 long to a 50 long (the 40 turned out to be a critter cage with platic bottom and 1/8" glass, disaster waiting to happen). I used new sand with just a couple cups of the old substrate to seed the new sand. Again, I experienced zero livestock lose. So there are lots of ways to skin this cat.