Michael43
Valuable Member
ok so I had a reef tank for a short period of time about 5 years ago. Didn't have it long enough to really get too deep in the hobby. My current reef, is a reefer 450 about 3.5 months old and running great, fingers crossed. My goal in this tank was to eventually do a mixed reef of sps and lps, maybe a few softies here and there and of course some fish. Not too many. A goal fish was to get a blue spotted jaw who I recently acquired. He's so cool. Upon setting the tank up I made the sand bed a solid 2-3" deep for my future BSJ. In a short period of time(please don't whip me) I have acquired a lot of livestock(corals and cleaners mostly including sps frags recently). I guess where I'm going is that I started reading some threads about people either never cleaning sand beds and others doing it regularly. I have a lot of sand. 180 or so pounds in a 5 ft tank. I have about 12-15 nasarius snails moving this around a bit. I also read a lot of tank crashes are due to both either never cleaning the sand or doing it and releasing toxins. What do you guys do and what would you do if you were me? Use a Python and do small sections with my bi-weekly WCs? I never want to see a pets life endangered but I also as well as anyone on here could lose so much money if I choose the wrong route. Since the tank is newer I think now would be the time to possibly start slowly cleaning sections with my WC if that's the route I should take. Of course I'd much rather not do anything but I need to do what's right. Some of my livestock are a wwc bounce, carmabi candy basslet, rainbow chalices etc so I have invested a lot already and have a relationship with everyone i put in the tank so would devastate me as it would anyone to lose things. Sorry for the rant and I know it's a beaten topic but I'd like to see some input directed particularly towards me for you experienced guys. Thank you
Are you asking about cleaning the sand bed? Because an orange spotted diamond goby can keep an ocean's worth of sand bed clean. Had one myself. My tank isn't particularly large at all, he actually ended up dying because the sand was too clean...
