please help with substrate questions

[gerry45]

mt 120 gallon with sump has been running about 6 months with 1.5 inch deep white sand substrate and I am fed up with the fine sand dust and detrius kicked up by the fish which clouds the water.

would changing to a coarser aragonite solve this? would my tank cycle and kill my fish?

what would be involved(besides hours of work) to do this?

 

[Max]

you aren't useing it as a dsb so just hours of work. The thing is you want to make sure that you have enough fine particulate matter 1mm to 1.5 mm sand to make sure that your infaunal critters can get to the food, feces or what ever and process it. If you have particles that are too big they won't be able to do that and you'll have nitrate issues. If you change over to a deep sand bed ,"they can have problems of their own", you'll get enough bacteria and critters living in your sand to make it sticky.


The only issue I can see with dsb's is they sometimes build up phosphates and leach them into your water. That can be avoided/mitigated a little by adding macro algae or soft corals for nutrient export.
hth
chris