Cleaning sand . .

[darwin604]

As a long time FW aquarium owner I've always been accustomed to vacuuming my sand when I do water changes. However, now that my little nano is getting filled with more LR and corals I'm wondering about how good it is to be vacuuming the sand. Most of the sand is covered in rock and its getting pretty hard to get at most of it without totally upsetting the tank. Anothing thing I've noticed is I seem to get considerably more algae growth after stirring up the sand when I try to clean it (maybe realeasing trapped nutrients into the water??). Any advice would be great!

 

d.

[Acoustic]

Don't clean the sand. The sand should be loaded with microorganisms to do the job. The only thing you should be removing from the sand is cyano. And I did that by hand.

[keljim's]

I'm really new at this, so I probably shouldn't be trying to answer any questions...but here goes. I have been told that the sand works as part of your filtration process because it gets full of the beneficial bacteria. If you vacuum the sand you run the risk of upsetting this balance which in turn allows undesirable organisms to prosper in the tank. I am being told that the only thing to remove from the sand is if you have a particularly large peice of detrious or hair algae then it's OK to remove it by hand, otherwise leave the sand bed alone. Is this right you guys? Any thoughts?

[zzpw3x]

Sand stirring depends on the depth of the sand bed. If it is a 4-6" sand bed, don't stir and make sure you have a good cross-section of "bugs" in the sand. If you are talking about a 1" sand bed, it is not donig the majority of your bio filtration, the LR is doing it. If you don't stir it you are gonig to end up with a lump of rock and/or big nutrient sink.

 

But then I am a newbie too, so that is by 2 cents worth.

 

-Dale

[darwin604]

Originally posted by Acoustic

Don't clean the sand. The sand should be loaded with microorganisms to do the job. The only thing you should be removing from the sand is cyano. And I did that by hand.

 

Yah thats what I did when I had my cyano plague a couple months back . . worked well. I havent been stuirring it either . . is that a good idea?

 

d.

[Acoustic]

The best thing is to let nature take it's course. As long as you are not importing excess nutrients into your tank everything will run it's course.