Dinos, is it my sand? Or am i missing something else?

[Stevesteve15]

Tank: red sea max e260
Nitrates: 14.8
Phosphates: 0.11
Alk 7 dkh
Lighting: 4 bulb ati sunpower with an or3 blue plus and reef day plus
Flow: jebao scp120 and slw 30
I use An aquabuddie rodi and it’s 0 tds
Stock: 2 clowns, possum wrasse, pygmy angel, yellowtail damsel, and a bangaii cardinal

I keep getting dinos like clockwork. As of last night i started microbacter dosing and have some spongexl because it worked last time, but i’d rather not have to keep throwing everything at the wall for dinos. Is there something i’m missing? I would imagine background trace elements have been fine, a few of my acros like pc rainbow look better than they ever have.

Sand is currently caribsea hawaiian black, moving in 3 weeks and if changing my sandbed might help, i’ll gladly do it then. I’d like to keep a sandbed of some sort because the clowns and pygmy angel are moving out to my soft coral tank and i want to fill that stocking hole with a couple of wrasses. Otherwise i’m at a loss, they tend to stick to the sandbed and any acro tips that may have been rubbed during fragging.

I’d really like to be hands off after the tank move to let everything truly settle in. Anybody have any words of wisdom? It’d be greatly appreciated.

 

[Tahoe61]

My 1st hand experience with black sand was not good. Once I removed the black sand and replaced it with Aragonite the tank completely turned around.
If able I would also introduce some LR from a vendor such as Gulf Rock or similar.
I dose Microbactor7 daily without issue.

 

[Stevesteve15]

My 1st hand experience with black sand was not good. Once I removed the black sand and replaced it with Aragonite the tank completely turned around.
If able I would also introduce some LR from a vendor such as Gulf Rock or similar.
I dose Microbactor7 daily without issue.

Gotcha, during the move, as long as i keep the live rock wet and give everything a couple of days to settle, i shouldn’t get any kind of major cycle or die off right?

 

[Tahoe61]

With enough LR you should be fine. You will be a lot happier with regular Aragonite. I used the Hawaiian Black Sand and I found pieces attached to the magnets of my power head with means there were metals in the black sand.