Letting sleeping wrasses lie ?

[plack]

Hi,
I have 2 wrasses a red corris and a melanurus They are healthy and had them Together over 1 year in a 180 gallon with about 6 other fish that all are healthy and I have had for over 2 years no additions in the last year and all mostly get along.

At night they dig into the sand to sleep.

Unfortunately I have High Nitrates and Have done everything I can think of to help.

Upgraded protien skimmer Better water flow cleaned out refegium and restarted it with new better bulbs and fresh stock plants.

But the flow in the tank is a vortex that easily could move the sand all over.

So can I go Bare Bottom?? Will it change there behavior? Will they be o.k. without it?

I Have Taken the deep sand bed down to a shorter sand bed as I had Hardened sand I had to remove and aquascape to prevent this from happening.

I even tried az No3 and it made my tank and everything in it slime like mad and eventually killed some sps corals before I gave up on it !

Nitrates from the sand bed seem to be the problem But i love the wrasses- Any other suggestions- After 3 years with a 180 I have never KEPT the nitrates as low as they were in my 55 gallon am I am Very Frustrated and have spent and Done allot to try to change this--Yes i do 30 Gallon water changes every 2 weeks.

Paul

 

[plack]

BUMP-------------------------------------------

 

[mystikdragon7]

Not sure what would happen to them if you took all thier sand. It might freak them out pretty good. Can you take out all the sand and leave a pile in a corner without any flow to it?

 

[jag3534]

Roscoe did something neat in his new big tank where he had half the tank bare bottom, and the front half witha small amount of sand for his wrasse. And I remember another lady that wanted to take her sand out, so she removed like an eighth of the sand a week or something, til there was just a small corner she left in a corner. And somebody else took the sand out and left a little bowl full of sand in the back for them to sleep in. Some random ideas for you from what i've read.