Cleaning Ugly Sand

yup, Leah is right. You are suficating your sand bed you will need to siphon your sand do it slowly to not have to much stuff flotting around your tank. You may want to do it a second time, but, before you do it the second time you will need to move the sand away from the walls of the tank. Using an algea scraper and scrape that bad black brown algea off the walls while you have a hose to siphon the bad stuff out of your tank. Then do a complete siphon of your sand again, do your water change and things should settle down from there.

Bill

[Oscar]

Thanks Bill and Leah. I will start that this weekend.

After I get the current situation cleaned up then is siphoning a regular maintenance program?

[Leah]

How deep is your sandbed? Yes I just use the hagen siphon's I think I got them from J&L.
Start slow, do not go overboard and time it with a water change

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by Leah

How deep is your sandbed?

Sandbed is about 2" deep. Yes, I will take it slow and make it part of my water change process from here on.

[Oscar]

I invested in a gravel siphon this week. Changed my carbon and GFO yesterday morning before siphoning.

My normal water change is 4G (13% of my water). The siphon drains water very quickly compared to how much sand is cleaned but this sure works. I filled one 4G tub yesterday and another 4G tub this morning but really did not clean much sand.

I checked for phosphates with my Elos test kit but still showing zero.

I noticed that last night my candy cane did not extend its polyps for the first time in months.

I would like to continue siphoning through the week but should I wait until the candy cane shows its polyps again as an indicator that the water has returned to normal?

I would wate a few adys (2-3) in between the siphonings to let things get back to normal.
Are you just siphoning one small part of your tank at a time, that is what I would do. If the siphon picks out alot of sand you can lift the siphon up off the sand and slow the flow a bit. This lets the heavy sand fall beck to the sand bed and will still clean it as the small particals will stay in the siphon. If you want to do a larger area of your sand you can, just plan on doing a larger water change your corals should respond quicker also.

Bill

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by bvlester

I would wate a few adys (2-3) in between the siphonings to let things get back to normal.

Bill

Bill: As many have said, good things happen slowly. So I will take your advice and siphon maybe twice a week. At this rate it will take me until Christmas to get through the first round of sand cleaning. Then it will become part of my usual water change regimen.