Calling all non syphoners

Mariette · Apr 9, 2019

It’s upgrade time :) let’s talk substrate. I understand DSBs don’t require syphoning and are best left untouched. So, uh, am I missing something?!? Do you actually still have to syphone the top parts and I just haven’t read that part anywhere yet? Why would anyone NOT want a DSB? Any fear that sand sifting CUC or fish (gobies, Sea starts...) would disturb enouph of it to cause a problem? While we’re on the subject, let’s talk pros and cons of a fine sandbed v crushed coral. How do you prevent a sandy mess?

I’m taking the new build very slow. I’m going to research and overthink everything lol.

Ron Reefman · Apr 9, 2019

You don't have to siphon any sand bed. Mine is only about 2" deep and 18 months old and I never have siphoned it. And unless I get a cyano outbreak, I probably never will.

Mariette · Apr 9, 2019

Ron Reefman said:
You don't have to siphon any sand bed. Mine is only about 2" deep and 18 months old and I never have siphoned it. And unless I get a cyano outbreak, I probably never will.

What?!? What’s your secret? Is it sand? Crushed coral? Is it about flow? CUC? No fish? One heck of a skimmer? How do u do it?

Ron Reefman · Apr 10, 2019

During my first couple of years in the hobby I vacuumed my sand. I found it to be a giant pain in the neck, so I quit.

I have a 40g cube with a 40g sump/refugium. There is a filter sock I change every 5 to 8 days as it gets close to being blocked up enough that water starts to get higher in the sock than the water level in the fuge. I have a good, but reasonably priced and sized skimmer from Coral Box and I skim a bit on the wet side. That's it for filtration. No activated carbon, no GFO reactor, no phosphate reactor, no filter floss, no Marine Pure blocks and water changes are about 20 to 25 gallons every couple of months (and that's more than I did when I had bigger tanks).

The cube is full of zoas with a few sps and lps corals, about 30 Rock Flower Anemones, a small RBTA, a few mini-maxi anemones, a couple Curly-Q anemones and a couple sand anemones. There are 6 fish, a small Scopas Tang, a big fat Pajama Cardinal, a Sixline Wrasse, a Indigo Bassett and 2 Wyoming White Clowns. I have 1 big serpent star and a couple smaller serpent stars, an emerald crab, some small white dwarf feather dusters, a couple of small spaghetti worms, a bigger than your thumb yellow sea cucumber (sand sifter) and a big fat cucumber that buries itself in the sand and is a filter feeder. IMHO, the stars and sea cucumbers do a good amount of work in the sand. Oh, and the sand is sugar fine sand. I find after a couple of months it starts to hold together well and doesn't blow around due to water flow.

Then there is the way the tank is rockscapped and water flow. I have a very unique design (not that it's the secret to not cleaning the sand). I have a platform of egg crate that sits on pvc pipe legs. It's about 2" off the sand in front and 6" back from the front glass. It's tipped up toward the back and is about 5" below the water's surface at the back of the tank. I used smaller rocks to scape the tank and 95% of them are on the egg crate. Some sit on the sand at the front edge of the egg crate to hide it from view at the front of the tank. That leave a very big 'void' of about 25% to 35% of the tank under the egg crate. It seems the sea cucumber and the stars love the open sand and the protection from the light. That open sand houses the dwarf feather dusters, spaghetti worms and the sand anemones (which aren't photosynthetic). At night the fish all retreat under the egg create as well. I have one small wavemaker that is in an upper back corner and it is aimed down at the center of the tank, under the egg crate platform. There is one small and one large wavemakers that work above the egg crate platform and rockscape.

The front 6" of the tank is sand and is not under the egg crate platform. That is almost all covered with RFA's and mini-maxi anemones. And most of them are in small pvc end caps. They set their foot in the bottom of the end cap and I set the end cap down into the sand so it disappears. The anemones can retract under the sand and are then in a nice small protected environment (the sides of the end cap). I've never had an anemone move on me since I started keeping them this way. And that also means I have very little exposed sand in front of the rockscape on the raise egg crate platform. But 75% of the sand on the tank bottom is exposed, but it's under the egg crate platform and rockscape and that sand has great water movement from the wavemaker.

That's probably WAY more than you wanted to know! And I don't have a single simple secret for not needing to clean the sand. Below, in my signature, there is a link to my build thread. There you can see the assemble of the tank (it's a DIY tank) and the egg crate platform. Here is a fairly recent pic of the tank, the filter feeding sea cucumber and the entire system.

Mariette · Apr 10, 2019

Ron Reefman said:
During my first couple of years in the hobby I vacuumed my sand. I found it to be a giant pain in the neck, so I quit.

I have a 40g cube with a 40g sump/refugium. There is a filter sock I change every 5 to 8 days as it gets close to being blocked up enough that water starts to get higher in the sock than the water level in the fuge. I have a good, but reasonably priced and sized skimmer from Coral Box and I skim a bit on the wet side. That's it for filtration. No activated carbon, no GFO reactor, no phosphate reactor, no filter floss, no Marine Pure blocks and water changes are about 20 to 25 gallons every couple of months (and that's more than I did when I had bigger tanks).

The cube is full of zoas with a few sps and lps corals, about 30 Rock Flower Anemones, a small RBTA, a few mini-maxi anemones, a couple Curly-Q anemones and a couple sand anemones. There are 6 fish, a small Scopas Tang, a big fat Pajama Cardinal, a Sixline Wrasse, a Indigo Bassett and 2 Wyoming White Clowns. I have 1 big serpent star and a couple smaller serpent stars, an emerald crab, some small white dwarf feather dusters, a couple of small spaghetti worms, a bigger than your thumb yellow sea cucumber (sand sifter) and a big fat cucumber that buries itself in the sand and is a filter feeder. IMHO, the stars and sea cucumbers do a good amount of work in the sand. Oh, and the sand is sugar fine sand. I find after a couple of months it starts to hold together well and doesn't blow around due to water flow.

Then there is the way the tank is rockscapped and water flow. I have a very unique design (not that it's the secret to not cleaning the sand). I have a platform of egg crate that sits on pvc pipe legs. It's about 2" off the sand in front and 6" back from the front glass. It's tipped up toward the back and is about 5" below the water's surface at the back of the tank. I used smaller rocks to scape the tank and 95% of them are on the egg crate. Some sit on the sand at the front edge of the egg crate to hide it from view at the front of the tank. That leave a very big 'void' of about 25% to 35% of the tank under the egg crate. It seems the sea cucumber and the stars love the open sand and the protection from the light. That open sand houses the dwarf feather dusters, spaghetti worms and the sand anemones (which aren't photosynthetic). At night the fish all retreat under the egg create as well. I have one small wavemaker that is in an upper back corner and it is aimed down at the center of the tank, under the egg crate platform. There is one small and one large wavemakers that work above the egg crate platform and rockscape.

The front 6" of the tank is sand and is not under the egg crate platform. That is almost all covered with RFA's and mini-maxi anemones. And most of them are in small pvc end caps. They set their foot in the bottom of the end cap and I set the end cap down into the sand so it disappears. The anemones can retract under the sand and are then in a nice small protected environment (the sides of the end cap). I've never had an anemone move on me since I started keeping them this way. And that also means I have very little exposed sand in front of the rockscape on the raise egg crate platform. But 75% of the sand on the tank bottom is exposed, but it's under the egg crate platform and rockscape and that sand has great water movement from the wavemaker.

That's probably WAY more than you wanted to know! And I don't have a single simple secret for not needing to clean the sand. Below, in my signature, there is a link to my build thread. There you can see the assemble of the tank (it's a DIY tank) and the egg crate platform. Here is a fairly recent pic of the tank, the filter feeding sea cucumber and the entire system.

Wow. Can’t wait to see that threat. You’ve got a well oiled machine there. But couldn’t see link to build thread?