Cleaning sand bed issue

[Reef.Blue]

I try to clean my sand bed out with my syphon, but the sand keeps getting sucked up due to me making the wrong decision and buying very fine sand. Any tips of how to clean the sand efficiently without syphoning it up?

 

[StatelineReefer]

Pinch or fold the hose to control the water flow while you clean your sandbed

 

[mfinn]

Yeah pinch the hose to slow down the flow. I used to hold my thumb over the end of the hose, over the bucket to regulate how much flow is going through the hose.

I'm assuming you are using a gravel vac.

 

[brandon429]

How big is this tank

 

[Eleni18]

sand sifting goby

 

[nothing_fancy]

Rather than syphoning you could just blow it out with a baster or something similar. If you've got any clumps of algae in the sand just manual removal of the algae is fine. I blow mine out real quick once a week with the return off and afterward I dump in a little bit of coral snow to grab anything thats hanging out in the water column.

 

[mmusc1987]

sand sifting goby

I agree with this. I have a diamond watchman and I thoroughly enjoy watch his engineered marvels with my sand. He moves it all from one side of the tank to the other in mere hours. Sand is clean though! That is algae on the glass not the sand.

 

[ReefEco]

You can also increase the diameter of the hose, or attach a short length of 2-3" clear PVC tube (Powertec sells cheap lengths) which basically allows you to plunge the pipe into the sand and suck out detritus, but the suction is not enough to suck up the heavier sand, just the lighter detritus you want to remove. This is the basic setup of most gravel vacs (like the Python) - a smaller tube attached to a ~2" diameter length at the end.

 

[Reef.Blue]

I agree with this. I have a diamond watchman and I thoroughly enjoy watch his engineered marvels with my sand. He moves it all from one side of the tank to the other in mere hours. Sand is clean though! That is algae on the glass not the sand.

I was thinking about getting one of those, but don't they need coarse sand? I have very fine sand.