Disturbed sand bed

[chvynva916]

Am I disturbing the bacteria in my sand bed by siphoning out the detritus from it every week?

[tinyreef]

are you sucking out the sand along with it or really just the detritus? the issue is the anaerobic bacteria's exposure to O2 rich (supposed to be) tank water which will kill it off.

 

if you have a power filter i would just blow the detritus off the sandbed or rock with gentle blasts to get it floating in the water column to be filtered out. then just change the filter or pad on the hob.

[spoondigity]

I like to siphon the detritus right out of the sand bed to avoid having a cloud in the water and missing a lot of it as it spreads into the water. You don't need to vacuum the entire thing every time you do a water change. You can clean one half on one water change, and then the next week clean the other half of the tank. That way one half isn't disturbed at all on any given change. Just my process but it works for me.

[ricknbecky]

We use the little syphon vacume and suck off the detiritis that has accumulated on the rocks but we leave the sand be alone. That is what you have a clean up crew for. All of the little sand stirrers should take care of that fo you.

[ross76053]

little sand stirrers should take care of that for you

Would you mind explaining that to my snails-n-crabs? The freakin' loafers..... :

[Djm9288]

lol:D

[ricknbecky]

little sand stirrers should take care of that for you

 

 

SHOULD being the operative word. I never said will.

[Pikelet]

I loved my sand stirrers. Unfortunately so did my peppermint shrimp. He's just waiting for me to order another batch of ceriths so that he can pick them off one by one as usual. He's a very norti boy.