wanted to chime in on some posts as the thread builds. glad to see all the sand work, if we had started this thread in 1999 we'd all be ran out of town.
on the goby and its nutrient removal:
the sandbed takes priority since it can affect the entire system. Since we cannot stop feeding the system and sustain the goby from the sand alone, its offerings are incidental and the other modes of feeding would take over much like when the sandbed was new and didn't have much to offer sifters other than a little undegraded protein in the form of detritus and a few pods or tiny insects. not breakpoint fare, and not enough to justify hands off sandbedding in my opinion. we would clean anyway in my opinion. refugia or direct additions of live sandbed organisms are ways to bring a tank up to par for those fish imo, the sole source shouldn't be the bed, it should have other supports of microfauna as well, which repopulates after either cleaning from us or the fish.
on the clouding/access problems (tank clouds anytime its disturbed):
in my opinion sandbed prep starts day 1. in our sand rinse thread (a different one) we rinse all sand harshly, massively, before use, even the ones marked "live sand" on the bag. this pre rinse makes all silt gone, the initial diatoms stage nonexistent, and we can access the tank for cleaning and moves and scape changes without clouding. Pre rinse, or do it over and do a skip cycle sandbed rinse would fix that problem. easier for nanos to run vs large tanks due to dilution. the kinds of sandbeds we don't mess with are the dedicated, remote ones that don't collect detritus like a street ditch collects cig butts. in my opinion, if a sandbed is located up under some fish, we need to be exporting it and that in any system of years old that has not, we can dredge up some scary test numbers from the depths of that bed such that we hope a rock slide never ever occurs nor any reason to touch the bed in the slightest manner in order to keep things safe.
in my opinion we all got tired of the minefield of the untouched DSB circa 1999.
Pre rinsing sand like caribsea arrive alive does not kill the bacteria, and we don't get pods and starfish in that kind of live sand anyway. its just sand, water, and bac. Rinsing removes silt, not bacteria. we have giant threads that show how to take apart a reef tank, change out the entire sandbed for either a new one or rinsed one, and instantly start anew with no cycle.
There are times for partial work, and times for full on resets and its quite easy to navigate both nowadays, we have lots of examples. The smaller tanks benefit much better from full on cleanings vs incremental ones, and large tanks typically have no other option other than incremental work bc full water changes are so hard to run.
on the goby and its nutrient removal:
the sandbed takes priority since it can affect the entire system. Since we cannot stop feeding the system and sustain the goby from the sand alone, its offerings are incidental and the other modes of feeding would take over much like when the sandbed was new and didn't have much to offer sifters other than a little undegraded protein in the form of detritus and a few pods or tiny insects. not breakpoint fare, and not enough to justify hands off sandbedding in my opinion. we would clean anyway in my opinion. refugia or direct additions of live sandbed organisms are ways to bring a tank up to par for those fish imo, the sole source shouldn't be the bed, it should have other supports of microfauna as well, which repopulates after either cleaning from us or the fish.
on the clouding/access problems (tank clouds anytime its disturbed):
in my opinion sandbed prep starts day 1. in our sand rinse thread (a different one) we rinse all sand harshly, massively, before use, even the ones marked "live sand" on the bag. this pre rinse makes all silt gone, the initial diatoms stage nonexistent, and we can access the tank for cleaning and moves and scape changes without clouding. Pre rinse, or do it over and do a skip cycle sandbed rinse would fix that problem. easier for nanos to run vs large tanks due to dilution. the kinds of sandbeds we don't mess with are the dedicated, remote ones that don't collect detritus like a street ditch collects cig butts. in my opinion, if a sandbed is located up under some fish, we need to be exporting it and that in any system of years old that has not, we can dredge up some scary test numbers from the depths of that bed such that we hope a rock slide never ever occurs nor any reason to touch the bed in the slightest manner in order to keep things safe.
in my opinion we all got tired of the minefield of the untouched DSB circa 1999.
Pre rinsing sand like caribsea arrive alive does not kill the bacteria, and we don't get pods and starfish in that kind of live sand anyway. its just sand, water, and bac. Rinsing removes silt, not bacteria. we have giant threads that show how to take apart a reef tank, change out the entire sandbed for either a new one or rinsed one, and instantly start anew with no cycle.
There are times for partial work, and times for full on resets and its quite easy to navigate both nowadays, we have lots of examples. The smaller tanks benefit much better from full on cleanings vs incremental ones, and large tanks typically have no other option other than incremental work bc full water changes are so hard to run.
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