cleaning sand

[saixiong08]

I've been trying to clean the sand bed of my tank, and when i siphon in those hard to reach places, I get some of the sand sucked out too. Can i take that sand and rinse it(tap water) and put it back in the tank?

 

[cracker]

I think Ya can just drain off the tap real good & soak in some new salt water for a while.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

You don't really need to soak it in salt water. Basic rinse to get the poo poo off.

 

[jeff williams]

If your not doing this already try, as you suck up sand kink the hose let the sand settle out of the sand vac then release the kink and continue you won't get hardly any sand in your bucket

 

[saixiong08]

If your not doing this already try, as you suck up sand kink the hose let the sand settle out of the sand vac then release the kink and continue you won't get hardly any sand in your bucket

Yes I will try it

 

[lou dog420]

I've never cleaned my sand!! Lol

 

[GeoffSLC]

I quit cleaning my sand, because I finally realized that disturbing my sand bed during water changes caused HUGE spikes in my phosphates. When I quit siphoning the sand, the phosphates slowly came down.

 

[Douglas Wattier]

My clowns love to dig the sand up everywhere... actually starting to aggravate me a lot.

 

[jpcrash1]

Yes my clown also digs sand in the area he calls his and goes after any chromis who go near his spot.

 

[brandon429]

Geoff is that undisturbed sinking a compounding effect or is it mineralized/inert

In my opinion that's the evaluation and if someone here would run a neat test and post, we could learn critical info about sandbed biology

Someone who has high quality nitrate and phosphate kits, tape onto a thin wooden dowel a long length of airline tubing

The dredge

Wedge it carefully in a back area down slow all the way to bottom

Carefully mouth siphon that tank gold sample into a cup, slow proceedings will not disrupt

In that mud sample, it must be aerated and kept topped off and heated properly for 48 hours, crucial, not before

Then take critical nitrate and phosphate readings of the prepped and digested mud water (delay gives proteins time to break down by aerobes et al) and post them compared to a control cup of totally clean saltwater brand new and made up 48 hours ago and one of tank water from now. Post the three comparatives= totally new measures to add to the ongoing great sandbed approach evolution.

From that sample reading we will have core new confirmation or redirection for this sand rinse thread:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

 

[brandon429]

That thread is not intended to say that forced cleaning is best. It's simply a demo of how repeatably we can rip tanks apart to the base + reassemble with skip cycle reassembly, should someone want that.

There will always be a non rinsing, hands off faction in reefing seeking true mineralization where dredge samples show neutral impacts down low, not just isolation away from water measures. Technically we need dredge samples from high/low (strata) in the bed to find the conversion point

I predict it's fertilizer but will accept correction if not. Larger tanks compound slower, the bed may measure just fine if it's new. Someone dredge for us a fifteen year hands off bed pls, I'd PayPal for such posted info


Anyone here got an old nano reef w sandbed all color infused with coralline and algae and age indicating textures? Post a dredge reading of that setup ideally