Maybe syphon sand into large bucket and overflow mosly just water (maybe a sheet or filter of some sort here to catch the fine bits of sand still turned up in the water) into a larger pail underneath with a pump returning the water to dt? Idk if that makes sense? I was picturing a 5 gallon pail on a box over a small kiddy pool with a retun pump and a sheet/filter between the two? Now that i think about it tho... Syphon into a smaller tank with an overflow into a sump and return the water to display. Sand should stay in smaller tank with overflow, no?

I have a 230 gallon display tank and a 100 gallons sump. What I was going to do was just siphon the water and sand into 5 gallon pails. Then I was going to replace the water with new water for my scheduled water change. So hopefully when removing the sand and water I do not remove more than 40 gallons of water. The siphon hose I was going to use is a three-quarter inch soft plastic hose.
I was just going to rinse the new sand in my RO/DI water. I like the idea of using a large diameter PVC pipe to put the new sent back into the tank.

Hey Brad, i have the answer for you!! Ok, when i used to clean and siphon out the fish only system at progressive reef, i would get the big brute, siphon into the brute, then get the freshwater aquarium micron filter (progressive growth has a couple still) and the pump and pump water out of the brute through the filter and back to the tanks...voila crystal clear water and one hell of a yucky dirty filter media spongey thingy (looks like an acordian):question:.
I am off tomorrow and was heading by there anyway, i will bug the guys to help me dig it out of the shed. ttyl

Thanks Ronnie, but I asked this 08-03-2011. I got it all sorted out now :)

Damn how did i miss this.
Told you so:mrgreen:

Not sure what you think you missed :) I didn't remove sand, I changed it for larger grain.

Duuuuhh....sorry Brad. :redface: