Just shut down. Sand bed turned into concrete.

PaulS

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Just shut down. Had started tank about a year ago. About 3 months after I set it up the sand bed was very hard. It was so hard I had trouble breaking it up. At that time I was not dosing anything. I started out with about 4 inches deep of fine grain aragonite. It kept getting hard after it was broken up where I could get at it. For over a year I could not keep my alk up. Any ideas what would cause the sand to calcify?
 

Uncle99

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Low magnesium.
Rule that out first.
Should be say 1350-1450ppm or the CA and the Alk just fly together and build up everywhere including sand.
 

dhnguyen

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Concrete is essentially made up of sand, gravel, water, and cement
Cement is pretty much limestone CaCO3
My guess is you had a lot of CaCO3 (calcium carbonate)
 
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PaulS

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Thanks guys it turned hard when I set it up and before I started dosing anything.
 

ZoWhat

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Work Digging GIF by US National Archives
 

ying yang

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Or get critters that constantly turn sand bed over and also oxygenates it as added bonus?
This what my plan is and hoping it works
 
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