What’s your Tip for a clean sand bed?
- Thread starter nicowboy
- Start date
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
- Messages
- 7,940
- Reaction score
- 11,218
- Review score
- +0 /0 /-0
- Location
- Spring, Texas
They clean everything... It's like having a Roomba!
This is why I get dressed in the bathroom. I have no Roomba for hair worms.
Early in the game but thus far it seems like the NUTRIENT EXPORT mode on my MP 40's helps a great deal. Unfortunately it doesn't remove dinos though lol!
Engineer gobies are so cool, I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone unless they have base rocks that are sitting on the glass because they will move your sand around like crazy lol
Either I've got a filthy sandbed or I just clearly feed mine too well.... I've had it for a couple of years now and the diamond goby is actually the biggest fish in my tank at the moment
It’s mostly that they die from not being fed through shipping and then not getting enough in tanks. The problem is they struggle to eat large things like brine and mysis shrimp as they filter out large particles in their gills. Once you get one settled and eating they’re good but the first few months can be hit or miss. I find sinking pellets works well for them as they’ll dissolve them in the mouth. A good pod population also works.Either I've got a filthy sandbed or I just clearly feed mine too well.... I've had it for a couple of years now and the diamond goby is actually the biggest fish in my tank at the moment
Assortment of snails about 2 per gallon, a conch for every ft of sand bed. Diamond goby if you don't mind sand piles.. every morning my sand looks freshly groomed. Plenty of flow
balsted my rocks recently and I was like "woah pal" I decided I will blast them before my next water changeMost debris for me is from fish poop.
Sits on top of sandbed, you can use turkey baster to blow towards filters before cleaning filters, after an hour or two, blast your rocks also, you will be surprised by the amount on them
- Joined
- May 10, 2020
- Messages
- 2,370
- Reaction score
- 9,376
- Review score
- +1 /0 /-0
- Location
- Washington, DC Metro
Critters! Wrasses, engineer gobies, nassarius snails, cucumbers, conchs, a gaggle of hermits, etc. I also vacuum small sections as I do WC's each week and turn others to get stuff in the water column. I also run my pumps on export mode at night.
Turkey baster once a week. Turns over the top 1/2 inch of my sugar sand and gets the detritus into the water column.
The corals love it, and the Reefmat and skimmer pull out a lot of junk.
I siphon mine similarly but just clean sand in tank water, filter water with 10 micron socks and return water and sand to tank. Started doing this when I had dinos and continue now with other algae on sand bed. If my nutrients weren't low I'd dump the water and add fresh. Curious why you want to bleach your sand. Seems counterproductive to building diversity?
diversity is in the rocks, waste and a few pods and worms are in the bed, mostly waste by a large margin.
the worms that track down through the cross section are bioload within the tank, neat to look at but also eject waste pellets out of one end and contribute to the overall waste loading. they don't help the sandbed avoid taking on waste, they contribute to waste stores
a few bugs crawling on top are going to be lost in cleaning, but they'd be eaten by a fish too eventually and will just repopulate off communities from the live rock over and over. neutralizing sandbeds isn't harmful in reefing, it has a net benefit vs harm/big sand works threads show.
stick stirring works great too:
www.reef2reef.com
the worms that track down through the cross section are bioload within the tank, neat to look at but also eject waste pellets out of one end and contribute to the overall waste loading. they don't help the sandbed avoid taking on waste, they contribute to waste stores
a few bugs crawling on top are going to be lost in cleaning, but they'd be eaten by a fish too eventually and will just repopulate off communities from the live rock over and over. neutralizing sandbeds isn't harmful in reefing, it has a net benefit vs harm/big sand works threads show.
stick stirring works great too:
" MY WHITE SAND METHOD "
I've always talked about this in the fb groups because i get so many questions and compliments on my sand bed ....well here's my method....note: I've never tried this on a tank older than 3 years !!!! I'm well aware of the problems that can occur on older tanks...this is a "DAILY" method i use...
www.reef2reef.com
Last edited:
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2018
- Messages
- 11,360
- Reaction score
- 17,871
- Review score
- +1 /0 /-0
- Location
- Way upstate NY
In a young tank, sure, rinse and throw back. In my very mature tank, I'm not loosing any biodiversity.
I bleach it to kill anything, same reason I bleach my filter socks. Kill any bacteria, and make it nice and white again.
OP
OP
Appreciate your tipdiversity is in the rocks, waste and a few pods and worms are in the bed, mostly waste by a large margin.
the worms that track down through the cross section are bioload within the tank, neat to look at but also eject waste pellets out of one end and contribute to the overall waste loading. they don't help the sandbed avoid taking on waste, they contribute to waste stores
a few bugs crawling on top are going to be lost in cleaning, but they'd be eaten by a fish too eventually and will just repopulate off communities from the live rock over and over. neutralizing sandbeds isn't harmful in reefing, it has a net benefit vs harm/big sand works threads show.
stick stirring works great too:
" MY WHITE SAND METHOD "
I've always talked about this in the fb groups because i get so many questions and compliments on my sand bed ....well here's my method....note: I've never tried this on a tank older than 3 years !!!! I'm well aware of the problems that can occur on older tanks...this is a "DAILY" method i use...
Similar threads
