Cleaning sand bed with sand sifting animals

[TastyScrants]

Do you clean your sand?

I don’t clean my sand and I’m slowly zeroing in on it being a source of a green film algae outbreak (the dusty kind that recovers the glass within an hour of scraping). It may be a coincidence but it does coincide with my maroon clownfish starting to dig holes.

My sand bed is about 2.5 - 3 inches deep.

I have a sand sifting starfish, a tiger pistol and sunspot goby pair, and a yellow faced rose goby. I also have a wrasse.

What would you do?
Should I gradually remove some sand over months?
Would you clean the sand regularly? I think my turnover is very high considering my livestock.
Would it be detrimental to my starfish and gobies diets if I cleaned the sand?

 

[reefrubble]

Hi BLineDisaster,

What type of wrasse do you have? Wrasse that sleep under the sanded at night such as a Melanurus Wrasse are great at keeping the sanded well turned and sifted.

While you can clean the sand, I would recommend against this in addition to removing it. Routinely manually cleaning the sanded yourself can release far more undesired nutrients into the water than would otherwise be there if the sand was left undisturbed. If you insist on trying to clean the sand, there is one approach that you can try so long as you do not do it continuously. Remove your current filter pad or sock and temporarily place a new one that is designed to filter out especially fine particles. Next, agitate the sanded by churning it with some type of rod or stick unlit the tank water is fairly cloudy and then wait until the water clears up again. You can repeat this step 2-3 times in quick succession if desired. After doing all of this, remove the filter pad or sock and replace it with the filter you had in beforehand or a new one. If you do plan on replacing it with the filter you were using beforehand, make sure to keep this filter submerged under some tank water in a container to prevent it from drying up.

Ultimately, I would strongly recommend taking a livestock addition approach to address this issue. Consider adding multiple Nassarius Snails, a Conch Snail, and/or gobies that suck up and spit out sand from their mouths.

I hope this helps!

 

[TastyScrants]

Hi BLineDisaster,

What type of wrasse do you have? Wrasse that sleep under the sanded at night such as a Melanurus Wrasse are great at keeping the sanded well turned and sifted.

While you can clean the sand, I would recommend against this in addition to removing it. Routinely manually cleaning the sanded yourself can release far more undesired nutrients into the water than would otherwise be there if the sand was left undisturbed. If you insist on trying to clean the sand, there is one approach that you can try so long as you do not do it continuously. Remove your current filter pad or sock and temporarily place a new one that is designed to filter out especially fine particles. Next, agitate the sanded by churning it with some type of rod or stick unlit the tank water is fairly cloudy and then wait until the water clears up again. You can repeat this step 2-3 times in quick succession if desired. After doing all of this, remove the filter pad or sock and replace it with the filter you had in beforehand or a new one. If you do plan on replacing it with the filter you were using beforehand, make sure to keep this filter submerged under some tank water in a container to prevent it from drying up.

Ultimately, I would strongly recommend taking a livestock addition approach to address this issue. Consider adding multiple Nassarius Snails, a Conch Snail, and/or gobies that suck up and spit out sand from their mouths.

I hope this helps!

Hey thanks for the information!

I don’t really want to clean the sand routinely, never have. I’m just considering it as a source of nutrient release currently.

Would it be acceptable to reduce the depth of my sandbed, it’s currently 2.5-3 inches.

My wrasse is a yellow halichoeres