Help - LS/LR Storage???

[~TG~]

I'm starting to break down my 125g right now for a few days till they re-do my floor. I'm not sure how to store my livesand/liverock for about 4 days max.

Is it ok to put it all together in a large trashcan and fill with the tank water or should i put the LS in one can and LR in another?
Do i have to have watermovement in there?
Do i have to have light?
Do i have to worry about the temperature if i keep it all outside?
I have a very large porcupine puffer, would it be ok to put it with 2 lionfish(dwarf and radiata)?
Anything else i should know or do?

sorry if these are "no-brainer" questions but I lost 9 of my fish with my last tank move, and i've heard of LR going bad when stored in cans for days and i have over 100lbs at least and cant afford to lose it.

Any advice or tips will help me tremendously

Thanks
Thelma

[matt]

I"d put the rock in one 50 gallon tub and the sand in another and fill them both with water; this will use up most of your tank water (you could mix up a bunch of new water as well) Definitely you want vigorous water movement and a couple of airstones, or you could use maxijets with the little venturi attachment to get some air in the water. Leaving these tubs outside in this heat will probably kill all sorts of stuff, which would then load up the water with ammonia and kill everything else...sorry! You'll be okay without any light for a few days; you'll lose some coralline algae, but it will grow back.

I don't know what to tell you about your fish; I assume you're talking about keeping them separate from the rock and sand. Maybe a local store you've done some business with would agree to hold them for a few days?

[GaryP]

Thelma,

I would suggest just putting it in a large plastic tote, with water from the tank and put some small power heads, like maxijets, in there for water movement. It should be fine just like that for a few days. Keep an eye on the temp. My wife made the mistake of putting a Rio 2500 in an ice chest full of corals once. The heat from the pump cooked them in that insulated container.

[JimD]

Id be very cautious with the live sand. Anytime you disturb an established sandbed you create a cycle by killing off micro-fauna. I would definately store the sand in a seperate container with water and gentle flow and keep an eye on ammonia levels, dont re-use the sand if you detect any traces of ammonia. Best advice would be to use fresh sand and seed it with the old especialy if the old sand smells like rotten eggs or thouroughly rinse it and allow it to dry before using it.

[Bill S]

Yeah, right Gary. "My wife did it".

[matt]

Jim's right; make sure you smell the sand before putting it back in. Actually, you should smell it as you're putting it in the storage container and just throw out (or wash and dry) any rotten egg smelling sand right away. If you have a 3-4" sand bed, you probably have a couple hundred pounds of sand at least. If a fairly large portion of it, say 75 lbs, is good but the rest is bad, that's still a great amount to seed a new sand bed with.

[~TG~]

Well everything is broken down and in its own containers now. The sand doesnt smell like "rotten egg" but it does have a smell more like "a fishy" smell and the water when i stirred it up was very dirty. I did have a 4in sand bed, i cant recall how many pounds of sand it was but it was ALOT of that "Arag-alive" i kept 2 - 5g buckets, a tub and tossed the rest.

So i should wash the LS anyway and dry it then??

The LR is in my garage in a large Brute trashcan w/lid and i hung the Tunze in there.. is that enough movement or should i add more?

Thanks
T

[demodiki]

I would keep the lid off of the trashcan if possible.

[matt]

I"d say if the sand smells okay you could re use it. Maybe there's alot of detritus that stirred up; it would be great to get rid of all that before you put the sand back in. Try to siphon off as much as you can, maybe change a bunch of water that the sand is in. BTW, if you filled up a 5 gal bucket with live land and there's only a few inches of water on top, it'll be really hard to keep that alive. It would be much better if if were all in a really big container with as high a water volume as possible, like if you could move your tank and use that. Plus, get some air going in the water. What happens if your sand is filled with critters (did you find lots of worms?) is that you'll use up the O2 in the smaller volume of water really fast and then the ph plummets and things start to die.