To remove sand bed or not?

[kc]

I vacuum the live sand every month when I'm doing watch change, and using a KM pro-scraper to clean it very often. However, the bottom of the tank still has some algae and not looking good. The live sand was in sugar size, but over period of time the top sand bed was cover of the live rock crumble.

Do you think I should remove the live sand? It will be lot of work and redo the rock works. :doubt:

 

[Krish]

I guess it is a personal opinion as everyone has their own views. I got tired of messing with mine so I went bb which I love more than anything! So much easier to keep clean IMO. If you do decide to remove it, I would suggest doing a little bit of it at a time and not all at once. Just my 2 cents

 

[moortim]

I have about a 1" sandbed mostly because I like the looks of it but it is hard to keep it clean and not blown around. I think it is worth the effort for how it looks but you may want to either pull it out or start replacing it. Yours looks like it has so much other stuff in it that it would be hard to clean. Like Krish said, just do it a little at a time.

Tim

 

[wrightme43]

I have removed several all at once. Works fine for me. BUT!!!!! there are a whole lot of ways to do reef keeping. Everybody who is succesful has figured out a way to be that way. What works for me may not work for you.
Steve

 

[bc_slc]

I like the look of sand, so I also keep a 1-2" sandbed. I vacume weekly and have some snails that live in the sandbed to help keep it clean.

Mat

 

[JC Pollman]

An alternative:

This year I have battled several outbreaks of nucience algae - the worst was the dinoflaggellets. I went through all the usual procedures and had some progress, but my tank was not anywhere near to the level of appearance I wanted it. I offer the suggestion below - NOTE: it worked for me, and it can cause severe problems if not done right.

Basically, the N and P are in your tank and are used up immediately when available by the algae. My tank always had perfect/near perfect levels of N and P, but obviously my algae did not read my test kit results What I found out was: bateria are even more aggresive at taking up N and P than the algae; however, bateria also needs carbon. Some people use vodka (alcohol) to provide the carbon, I used regular table sugar instead. It took about 4 days before the bacteria population took and my skimmer went nuts. Basically, the bacteria population exploded and my skimmer took the bacteria (with their N and P) out of my tank. In about a week and a half, hair algae had turned white and was falling off. My rocks looked a bit fuzzy, and it took a full month before things settled down. My sand has been snow white every since.

I have a 240 gallon system, and dosed a tablespoon per day. This seemed to be about right.

The biggest problem with going this route is that bateria, in addition to N, P, and C, also need oxygen. If you put too much carbon in the tank, no only will it look like the tank is doing its initial cycle (cloudy water) but it can also starve your tank's inhabitants of oxygen - in other words: a total tank die off.

I never got the cloudy water, and my tank suffered no losses what so ever, but if you read online, some people did. Also, if the N, or the P, get used up, it will limit the bateria, and hense you will not clean out the tank of all the unwanted chemicals.

Also, you need a good skimmer to make this work: if you do not skim the bateria out of the tank, you have accomplished nothing, but then, if you go BB, you also need a very good skimmer.

Just to make sure everyone reading this understands: it worked for me, but it has wiped out other people's tanks when not dosed properly.

 

[moortim]

An alternative:

This year I have battled several outbreaks of nucience algae - the worst was the dinoflaggellets. I went through all the usual procedures and had some progress, but my tank was not anywhere near to the level of appearance I wanted it. I offer the suggestion below - NOTE: it worked for me, and it can cause severe problems if not done right.

This is a very interesting thought, I don't know if I want to run home and try it but I am wondering how many people have tried something like this and what success (or failure) they have had.

Tim

 

[mungus]

Tim ldrhawke doses vodka every day I believe. He has had good sucess. He has a thread here where he talks about it. There are some good threads on RC in the Reef Chemistry forum. I would give you the links but I am not a premium member so I can't use the search button.

Here is the thread on RF
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8986&page=2&highlight=vodka

Brian

 

[kc]

JC, I have a phosphate reactor and running carbon and phosban together, so I assume that the baterica is using the carbon. I have a ETSS 800 skimmer and cleaning it every 2 weeks. There are 2 stars, snails and crabs to help to clean the sand. As you see in the pictures, they are not helping and lot of empty shells in the sand. Also the N and P are at perfect/near perfect levels.

 

[moortim]

Tim ldrhawke doses vodka every day I believe. He has had good sucess. He has a thread here where he talks about it. There are some good threads on RC in the Reef Chemistry forum. I would give you the links but I am not a premium member so I can't use the search button.

Here is the thread on RF
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8986&page=2&highlight=vodka

Brian

Sweet, thanks.

Tim

 

[JC Pollman]

JC, I have a phosphate reactor and running carbon and phosban together, so I assume that the baterica is using the carbon. I have a ETSS 800 skimmer and cleaning it every 2 weeks. There are 2 stars, snails and crabs to help to clean the sand. As you see in the pictures, they are not helping and lot of empty shells in the sand. Also the N and P are at perfect/near perfect levels.

The phosphate reactor only takes out inorganic phosphate, which, in an established tank, is usually about nil. The organic phosphate can only be removed (short of starting over) by removing (skimming) things out of the water that have absorbed/used the phosphate.

As for the carbon - I think you are talking about activated carbon. This is completely different. The bacteria can not use it. I am not a chemist, so I do not know why, but the carbon source has to something along the lines of: sugar, alcohol, vinegar, etc.

As for the N and P levels from the test kits, like I mentioned in my first post, my tank always had perfect, or near perfect, readings. The problem is that the algae is very aggressive and uses it up immediately, so you are not going to see any of it "free floating". N and P have to be there if you are having algae problems. Thankfully the bacteria are even more aggressive than the algae or we would never be able to get them out of the tank.

Warning repeated: the bacteria also use oxygen and the population can explode to the point where you suffocate everything in your tank. That said, if you overdose anything - including salt - you are going to have problems.