Must disturb sandbed... advice?

[cr500_af]

I'm replacing my skimmer tomorrow. The new/used one is larger than the old one and has to go in the refugium portion of my sump. It's a recirc, so I can feed it from outside the refugium... no problems there. However, the refugium has a sandbed, about 1-1/2" deep on average, which has been in place and undisturbed for about 4 months. There is visible detritus on the surface of the sand. I'll have to move about a 6x6" area in order to place the skimmer.

Should I try to carefully remove that sand, or should I gently push it back away from the area? Is this (and I know we're guessing here) enough disturbance to cause a dangerous spike of nasties?

I can shut off flow to the sump for a good while while this work is happening, but I don't want to go with no heat/filtration for long.

I have Prime on hand to use as a "just in case" to detox the nasties, but I would like to go into this knowing what to expect.

 

[dakota9]

I think you're safe.......

If you were talking about a >3" sandbed, I'd have my reservations, but at that depth, I wouldn't be concerned.

Also, I've read from several sources that it take 6 months for a DSB to breed enough bacteria to be beneficial to your tank/refugium. It's only been up and running for 4 months, so it probably hasn't completely colonized "the nasties" anyway.......

 

[hellfire]

Yeah, I wouldn't worry much. We just swapped everything from the 30G to the 120 the other day, and rustled up the 5in or so sandbed pretty good making sure there weren't any leftover nassurias (sp haha) snails. The 30 is still running with new frags in there and the params are still fine, and this is after 6 months or so of it running.

It should be alright.

Tyler

 

[ralph atl]

should be no issue.

 

[smoothie]

If it helps you sleep better stir that puppy up and then change the small amount of water from the fuge sucking up the waste. Add new water in the fuge and repeat once. Worst case you did a small water change

 

[lilrobb]

+1 for Smoothie.

Also have the skimmer run for some minutes in there - that will take out a good portion of the stuff too.
No return at that time though...