almost 60 days into cycle

WOW!, you mean I may have been able to help a veteran..............lol

I pulled my tank down last night to recycle, and redo a few things in it. I found that where my plumbing was under the sand, the sand was black and smelly (rotten eggish). I used pvc pluming under the dsb, to get water movement in different places (above the sand). Well, in more detail, I built some water fans out of PVC pipe. I would heat the PVC up with a heat gun, stuck a small flat washer in the (hot flimsy) PVC, and squashed it with a vice. This kept the pinch almost perfect, and would give a perfect fan of water movement. This would also keep pressure built up so it would blow water pretty good. I criss crossed every other fan so they would blow into each other at perp. angles. This gave some good water movement. Anyway, I did all of this plumbing, (2 fans on each end, and 3 in front and back) and then coverd the plumbing with sand. Was it a mistake to put this plumbing under the sand like this? I read a page yesterday where that (egg) smell was a poison (cant remeber the name off the top of my head) The article did go on to say that even being able to smell that smell was not a lethal enough dose to hurt marine life. I wonder if it was lethal enough to keep any bacteria from growing in my "fresh" sand bed.
 
oh yea, one thing to consider on that air chisel is that they oil them down pretty good, so I would make sure to get all that oil off before I went to sticking it in something important
 
Kreblak - No, do the breaking out of water. The rock was certainly flown 'dry' before and survived that. Also when you pull the rock out, it doesn't become 'magically' 00% dry - there's still water in the pores, plus a thin partial layer. Also , how long do you think this will tank - minutes, hours,days? This will not be a problem you think it will. If you're quick and careful you can minimise non microscopic life dieoff as well.
Liquifaction - I'm not sure what's going on in your sand bed? How fine, how deep?
 
4" deep sand bed,

It is kind of funny that people always ask about courseness of sand. I understand why people ask, its just how to describe is the difficulty. I have read in here that people used quickrete playsand. I used quickrete during this cycle (came in a white bag w/blue lettering). I would describe this sand as about 2/3 the size of salt granules (if you role it around in your fingers, you really cannot feel the edges of the sand) I found out that quickrete also makes playsand that comes in a clear bag w/green writting. This sand ranges from 2x salt size to about half crushed coral size. (who would put there kids in a gravel bed...lol). I am going to use "Mystic" swimming pool filter sand for this second try at a cycle. This sand is about salt to 1 1/2 salt granule size. It appers to be about the same coursness of the "live sand" you get from the LFS.
 
Liquafaction, what are your water parameters right now? You may have encountered the problem I did, in that my DSB was completely colonized, there was just too much ammonia production coming off of that shrimp.

My readings were a constant ammonia = 3 ppm and nitrites = 0. I have removed the shrimp now, as the tank has been cycled. The ammonia readings just kept throwing me for the longest time.
 
Well,
after I purchased the other tank, I took this one down. I wanted to make a little larger sump to house my skimmer and power heads. I want to put a small sump at the other side to house power heads. I also wanted to get those jacuzzi jet sockets for controling water movement and install those on the side of the sump walls.

Here is the weird thing to me. The shrimp have been totally decentagrated for about the last 4-6 weeks, so how did my amonia levels keep rising? After water change it was .25, then rose to .50, then right before I took it down, it was 1 ppm . I would check water parameters every 4 days to see what was going on. I never had nitrites to speek of .25, never had nitrates at all.

The only thing That I was running was 4 powerheads.

I had a filter running the first week of cycling. I removed the filter because my understanding was that was the use in having a sand bed (a filter). The sand bed would house the bacteria instead of the filter.

I ran a protein skimmer for a few hours every now and then. I ran that because I was trying to find a good location for it. I had it externally mounted on a shelf above the tank. I would spend hours plumbing, and setting it up, then run it to see how it worked, then try it again a few days later.


Oh, by the way, I am glad your tank cycled for you
 
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