More Help Please

[Nexus13]

i've been noticing more and more what looks like brown organic material building up on the sandbed in my tank.

what is this and is there anything that will eat it up?



thanks

[Nexus13]

i've been trying to vacuum this stuff up but it doesnt' vacuum easily, (quite heavy i guess)

Is it stuff that a skimmer should be pulling off?

i have an AquaC remora hang on skimmer on my 10 Gallon sump but it doens't really pull that much junk from my tank.

[christyf5]

What do you have for flow in your tank? You may need to increase the flow to get it into the water column and out of the tank. You can also try turkey basting it or stirring it to get it into the water column. I'm not sure if a cleanup crew (something like a sand sifting star or cerith snails) would help. When I had a sandbed in my tank I had that as well, its just a fine dust of detritus (fish poop and rock sloughing) and it ended up choking out the sandbed. I had a heck of a time keeping up with it and eventually gave up my sandbed, its much easier to vacuum up without a sandbed.

[Nexus13]

but sand looks so nice!

what do you have now that there's no sand?

[christyf5]

I have glass!
For me this was truly the best option. Unfortunately I lack whatever talent it takes to maintain a sandbed. Once I removed the sand my tank just took off and its been fantastic ever since. I just siphon off the little piles of detritus during my weekly waterchange and it works like a charm.

[Nexus13]

yah that extra detritus can't be good for the tank. Hmmmm... Sand makes it look so natural though. i've rearranged my rocks today so the debris can't really pile up in hidden places and changed to flow to bring out the detritus to the main part of the tank where its easy to see.

what kind of differences did you see after losing the sand?

I've never had this probelm before and have had the tank going for a 1 year now.

[christyf5]

well prior to having the sand I had excessive algae growth and a horrible case of dinoflagellates. I ended up having to take out the sand and powerwash the rock to sort of "shock" the tank and kill off the dinoflagellates. Since then I've had pretty much no algae problems (except for some very determined caulerpa) and my tank has flourished and basically I'm just enjoying success where I had none previously.

Do you have a full tank shot? The pic you posted sort of indicates your water is a bit "murky" looking, perhaps because of some of the stirred detritus. Do you have anything living in your sandbed?? You might want to see if you can get a cup or two of sand from a fellow reefer to charge it up with some new critters. As well, really work on trying to siphon that crap out. Even if you get sand with it, you can always rinse the sand to filter out the crap and then put the sand back in.

[Nexus13]

It looks like garbage right now cause i've stirred up all the sand bed and was trying to vacuum some stuff out.

Plus i'm having problem with my hard corals suddenly dying which is what has got trying to look after my tank better.

I'm doing water changes approx every two weeks.

I have a 10 gallon sump underneath with a few hunks of live rock in there and lots of macroalgae

In terms of stuff in my sand i"m not sure what you mean. I have a sand sifting star in there. what else could live in there?

[Nexus13]

my setup is a super McGuyver job

pretty ghetto.

I really wanna buy a proper drilled tank and get a new stand with in tank overflow.

That or i have to lose my yellow tang which would make me cry. he doesn't have enough room to be happy in this setup.

[christyf5]

I'm talking about worms/copepods. You know, sandbed critters. That layer of detritus does an excellent job of smothering the sandbed, choking it of oxygen and can sometimes kill off the beneficial critters