Sand bed

[jpontier212]

I need to get something to help with the sand bed in my tank. Not sure where to start but i don't trust my lfs for advise. My guy i trust from my lfs is on vacation. #reefsquad# need your advise

 

[chefjpaul]

How deep and old is it?

If it's fairly new, I'd use an acrylic stick/ rod and gently stir it up in sections during water changes.

 

[twilliard]

What is it that you see on the sand?
Some things you have to be careful of not to stir it up

 

[twilliard]

I need to get something to help with the sand bed in my tank. Not sure where to start but i don't trust my lfs for advise. My guy i trust from my lfs is on vacation. #reefsquad# need your advise

[HASHTAG]#reefsquad[/HASHTAG]

 

[cameronh]

You can try a sand sifting star

 

[jpontier212]

What is it that you see on the sand?
Some things you have to be careful of not to stir it up

Shrimp molt mostly. I have a coral banded shrimp that has doubled in size in like 4 months.

 

[jpontier212]

You can try a sand sifting star

Will it eat corals? I have a few frags in my tank that i don't want to lose

 

[Wiz]

Give us details. Depth, problems, current care

 

[Sabellafella]

You could also get things like cerith snails and hermits to help eat all the junk and keep the sand abit stired

 

[twilliard]

Shrimp molt mostly. I have a coral banded shrimp that has doubled in size in like 4 months.

I would just get a normal long sand bed vacuum

 

[ReeferMaddness843]

I like my tiger tail cuke. Leaves nice lil clean sand pellets all around in the am.

 

[jpontier212]

Give us details. Depth, problems, current care

I have a gallon glass i put 2 bags of carib sea black hawaiian substrate. So about 1 in deep. Not very deep at all. 40lbs of dry San Marco rock that i seeded. I have 5 blue legged hermit crabs, about 9 turbo snails (jumbo-small sizes) but my shrimp molts outta control.

 

[ReeferMaddness843]

A gallon glass???? Seems a lil small. Hahaha. I kid I kid.

 

[jpontier212]

55 gallon. Lol

 

[jpontier212]

I like my tiger tail cuke. Leaves nice lil clean sand pellets all around in the am.

what is that? tiger tail cuke?

 

[Wiz]

If its only an inch I would vacuum regularly. Try not to stir. Just use a python at an angle with a constricted flow. Atleast once a week. Imo

 

[jpontier212]

If its only an inch I would vacuum regularly. Try not to stir. Just use a python at an angle with a constricted flow. Atleast once a week. Imo

Thank you very much. I wasn't really sure

 

[cloak]

If you want to try and preserve some of the micro fauna living within the sand bed then you might want to stir it up as opposed to vacuuming it. Also, a vacuum can't reach some of the areas a small power head can and it's amazing what can accumulate UNDER your rocks sometimes. Being that you haven't done this before though, you might want to do it in small sections first. Stir it up, siphon out some of the dirty water and run a filter sock for a few hours to polish the water for you. Piece of cake.
Doing the whole thing once a month should suffice, but you can always adjust the schedule if need be. GL.

 

[Wiz]

Micro fauna are only effective in a bed 3+ inchs. A sand bed an inch or less can not support enough life to be affective. But I would vacuum as much as possable before trying to stir. You don't want all that gunk in your water column. Again, just my opinion. Once you've vacuumed all areas possable stirring might not be to bad. Idk

 

[chefjpaul]

If its only an inch I would vacuum regularly. Try not to stir. Just use a python at an angle with a constricted flow. Atleast once a week. Imo

Never understood this.
So, it's ok to add critters that mess up the sand bed, yet stir it lightly, but not ok for us to gently stir it in sections?

These critters don't take the junk out, just move it around, we have to manually remove detritus and such.