I've attached images of what it currently looks like. I do a water change (10 gallons) every other week. My tank is a biocube 32g. I don't move/vacuum the gravel. If I disturb the gravel, would that cause things like ammonia, nitrates/nitrites to rise, and kill stuff? How can I clean this up? Do I need to add more members to my cleanup crew, that will sift through the sand bed? I currently have in my tank a pistol shrimp, a goby watchman, a pencil urchin, 2 clown fish, some bumble bee snails, nassarius snails, and some hermit crabs.
Cleaning substrate advice
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Uroplatus
Active Member
Get the smallest PythonI've attached images of what it currently looks like. I do a water change (10 gallons) every other week. My tank is a biocube 32g. I don't move/vacuum the gravel. If I disturb the gravel, would that cause things like ammonia, nitrates/nitrites to rise, and kill stuff? How can I clean this up? Do I need to add more members to my cleanup crew, that will sift through the sand bed? I currently have in my tank a pistol shrimp, a goby watchman, a pencil urchin, 2 clown fish, some bumble bee snails, nassarius snails, and some hermit crabs.
Sean Clark
7500 Club Member
You could remove it all at once. It will cloud the water for a little bit (more likely turn it pink) but it will clear up and shouldn't hurt anything. With that much on the glass, I am sure there is plenty for your urchin on the rocks and the back wall.
Out of five hundred rip cleans on file ran the exact same way, I picked this thread to link the top five or six out of them all. Compete against them to see if you can rinse even cleaner than they did, if you want that tank to shine above
urchins are not required to live on tank waste, you can also feed them a cucumber or some nori from a supermarket, all kinds of tidy replacements once your tank is all clean. Clean doesn’t mean they have to starve, clean just means skip cycle shiny ruby clean.
www.reef2reef.com
any procedural questions are covered, those are start to finish jobs with outcomes after the rip clean, they are the best of the best. All you have to do is actually read their cleaning procedure and your tank will follow, in three hours or so. When the tank is fully taken down and empty, razor blade scrape off the glass back to total cleanliness. The whole thing skip cycles because we kept your live rock in saltwater as the main tank was taken apart.
you can see the sand rinse portion is as scary as a scream movie lol. But how good do those tanks look afterwards…all corals happy as they’ve ever been.
urchins are not required to live on tank waste, you can also feed them a cucumber or some nori from a supermarket, all kinds of tidy replacements once your tank is all clean. Clean doesn’t mean they have to starve, clean just means skip cycle shiny ruby clean.
Algae Identification
Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?
www.reef2reef.com
any procedural questions are covered, those are start to finish jobs with outcomes after the rip clean, they are the best of the best. All you have to do is actually read their cleaning procedure and your tank will follow, in three hours or so. When the tank is fully taken down and empty, razor blade scrape off the glass back to total cleanliness. The whole thing skip cycles because we kept your live rock in saltwater as the main tank was taken apart.
you can see the sand rinse portion is as scary as a scream movie lol. But how good do those tanks look afterwards…all corals happy as they’ve ever been.
Jekyl
GSP is the devil and clowns are bad pets
Nuclear option for a normal occurrence. Unless a reef has been grossly mismanaged I don't ever see a reason to do a rip clean. Everyone goes through algae and nutrient issues. I just don't see how completely tearing your reef apart should ever be given as advice for something minimal like algae or nutrients. All can be managed much easier without upsetting as much as you possibly can.
coral_joe
Community Member
I have a sand shifting starfish that does a great job. They sift thru the gravel when the light is on and then come out at night (very cool in the moonlight). Someone suggested a fighting conch recently here on this site. I have had him for about a month and it seems to be helping. I never vacuum.
LuisJr80
Active Member
I just got a starfish today and after he was added, he buried himself in the sand and hasn't moved. I maybe expected him to come out at night (moonlight light on) but nothing yet. I believe he is sand shifting starfish. I drip accumulated him together with a cleaner shrimp I got today and the shrimp is doing great.
Is this normal behavior?
Is this normal behavior?
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