How to clean the sand bed

C

cesar9059

AC Members
Dec 12, 2006
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Hi every one I am new in this forum and hobby, so I have a lot of question.
One of this is How do you clean the sand. Some peoples use a syphon to clen the gravel, but I don,t have gravel, I have only very fine sand. So I think that syphon pull out part of my sand bed, and I dont wish it because alterate my deep sand bed.

Thanks.

55 g
20 g refugium with caulerpa and active carbon
Aqua C Remora Pro skimmer with mag 3 and prefilter box
dsb = 3-4"
 
All i do with mine is use a syphon tube going to a water container, over the opening in the container i stretch fine mesh nylon...The water goes through, then sand gets collected and nearly all the diatoms off the sand go through to the water..When finished, put any sand you want to keep back in the tank, throw away the water and replace with fresh saltwater..Obviously, do this at water change time..

Niko
 
oK Thanks a lot. I think that this can help. Maybe if I remove only 0.5" of the sand bed I don't disturb the lower layer

Thanks
 
If you're trying to have a functioning deep sand bed, then disturbing more than a small portion of it at a time can be detrimental to its function. It's best to leave the sand bed alone, stock the proper invertebrates, and let them do their thing. Cerith and nassarius snails are excellent sand bed maintainers.

Is there a particular reason you need clean / remove part of it?
 
I had a problem with dead spots in my flow, mainly in the bottom corners due to my rock piles. This would cause the sand around those areas to become bloomed with brown algae and made my tank look dirty. I bought 2 small powerheads I guess you would call them. It's just a self-contained unit that sucks in water and shoots it out to generate flow. I stuck them back behind the rocks and it created a huge amount of flow in those dead spots and effectively keeps them clean without disturbing the bacteria at work under the sand's surface that would be disrupted by constantly cleaning and turning the sand.
 
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