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Coral Vue Hydros

Cleaning sand spiked my nitrates - is this normal?


Jakesaw

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I vacuumed sand first time since my 10 gallon has been set up ( year + ago ).  There was a ton of poop buried in there.  Vacuumed about 20 percent of tank water in the process and topped off with fresh. 

 

My nitrates have been hanging the entire time around 2-5 sometimes 10 ppm range.  Phosphates been low but readable with Dosing. 

 

No Phos today - I have to find my scooper for Phosphate test kit.  It didn't end up in box with rest of kit.

 

Today I measured my Nitrate and I'm at 25 PPM?    Not sure why the spike.  Did the dirty sand somehow help keep nitrates down?   Or did I release some buried nitrate when I stirred things up?   All my corals are pulled in and unhappy and it was a few days ago since I vacuumed my sandbed.  - Kindof perplexed

 

Anybody have this experience?  

 

 

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27 minutes ago, Jakesaw said:

I vacuumed sand first time since my 10 gallon has been set up ( year + ago ).  There was a ton of poop buried in there.  Vacuumed about 20 percent of tank water in the process and topped off with fresh. 

 

My nitrates have been hanging the entire time around 2-5 sometimes 10 ppm range.  Phosphates been low but readable with Dosing. 

 

No Phos today - I have to find my scooper for Phosphate test kit.  It didn't end up in box with rest of kit.

 

Today I measured my Nitrate and I'm at 25 PPM?    Not sure why the spike.  Did the dirty sand somehow help keep nitrates down?   Or did I release some buried nitrate when I stirred things up?   All my corals are pulled in and unhappy and it was a few days ago since I vacuumed my sandbed.  - Kindof perplexed

 

Anybody have this experience?  

 

 

You stirred up all the gunk. Most people only vacuum portions of the sand bed each time for just that reason. 

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1 hour ago, WV Reefer said:

You stirred up all the gunk. Most people only vacuum portions of the sand bed each time for just that reason. 

I hit about 1/3 of sandbed. 

 

And yes - it was NASTY!!!  I thought I had contained most of the gunk with vacuum siphon, but I did have to stop the flow a bit to keep sand from creeping up the tube too high.  

 

 

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RaymondNoodles

How long was the water cloudy after cleaning the sandbed? If I feel the need to vacuum the sanbed, I throw filter floss in for a couple hours until the water is clear, then toss it. It's always extremely nasty but I have not seen any nitrate spikes using this method.

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]

36 minutes ago, RaymondNoodles said:

How long was the water cloudy after cleaning the sandbed

I don't recall.  I have a Talbot Damsel that builds sand piles and dusts up the sand frequently.  I see white clouds when he does this. 

 

During this sandbed vacuuming, I was pulling up Poop sediment ( lots of it ) from bottom of tank.  In the waste bucket i t settled pretty quickly at bottom vs staying suspended. . I don't imagine it was suspended very long. 

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Disturbing the substrate when it has been sitting for a while always releases organic nasties that register as nitrate in both freshwater and saltwater tanks I've had. If you turn your substrate regularly, the amount released will not be as bad.

 You can vacuum small sections at a time as part of your water change.

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