Cloudy sandbeds

[Kial]

Whenever my sandbed is slightly disturbed, the tank just has so much stuff floating around.

I do have a sandbed vaccum but only do it once a month and also stir it up daily to try get as much as I can into filter socks. Not making much of a difference.

I have nassarius snails, stromb snail, trochus and pods. Really want a sand sifting fish but I know the tank would be an absolute mess once that goes in haha.

any tips on getting the sandbed clean without causing to much of an issue etc?

Thanks

 

[homer1475]

Vacuum it, or remove it.

Did you rinse it before adding to the tank when it was new? Yes even live sand needs to be rinsed to get rid of the fines.

Or like the OP, you get silted sand forever, Whenever it's disturbed, you have a snow storm in the tank.

 

[OutColdCRNA]

How old is the tank/ sand? Newer sand will release fines for a long time if it wasn’t rinsed extremely well before adding to the tank.

 

[Kial]

Vacuum it, or remove it.

Did you rinse it before adding to the tank when it was new? Yes even live sand needs to be rinsed to get rid of the fines.

Or like the OP, you get silted sand forever, Whenever it's disturbed, you have a snow storm in the tank.

Nah never rinsed it. I used caribsea live sand and it does say on the bag do not rinse. Will just have to keep vaccuming then

 

[Kial]

How old is the tank/ sand? Newer sand will release fines for a long time if it wasn’t rinsed extremely well before adding to the tank.

Tank is around 4 months now

 

[homer1475]

Nah never rinsed it. I used caribsea live sand and it does say on the bag do not rinse. Will just have to keep vaccuming then

Yup still needs to be rinsed or you face what your facing. Regardless fo what the bag claims.

Once you have some microbial life living on the sand grains, it will settle down.... SOME.

But you will always have that issue, it will just get less as times goes by.

 

[Kial]

Yup still needs to be rinsed or you face what your facing. Regardless fo what the bag claims.

Once you have some microbial life living on the sand grains, it will settle down.... SOME.

But you will always have that issue, it will just get less as times goes by.

Wish they would just say that on the dang bag

Will just have to wait a while before I can get a sandsifter

 

[homer1475]

Actually some sort of sand sifter, will make it go away faster.

Yes initially it will be worse(snowstorm), but as it gets sifted, it will remove a lot of the fines.

 

[homer1475]

I have found over the years, just cranking up the flow in the tank, and stirring it up really well every day, got rid of it in a week or so.

 

[Kial]

I have found over the years, just cranking up the flow in the tank, and stirring it up really well every day, got rid of it in a week or so.

Mine just doesn't seem to be going at all unfortunately. Will do another vaccum this weekend though

 

[homer1475]

You need to crank up the flow too, The idea is to keep the fines suspended in the water column until they can be pushed down the overflow.

I run 2 mp10's, 2 jebao PP8's, 2 nero 3's and a gyre. I crank them all up to 100% in my 80G cube. Yes I can blow the skin off SPS lol.

 

[Kial]

You need to crank up the flow too, The idea is to keep the fines suspended in the water column until they can be pushed down the overflow.

I run 2 mp10's, 2 jebao PP8's, 2 nero 3's and a gyre. I crank them all up to 100% in my 80G cube. Yes I can blow the skin off SPS lol.

Yeah I turn it up when I do it but don't leave it on too long as it smashes my hammer corals. How long do you keep it like that?

 

[homer1475]

15 to 20 minutes or until the water is mostly clear.

Usually in my tank, after that amount of time, stuff settles down again.

 

[Kial]

OK I'll have to leave it on longer as I only leave it for a couple of mins and then switch back to normal flow

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I also used caribsea live sand and didnt rinse it (the instructions on the bag say "do not rinse" so I just followed instructions) but I dont really remember having this problem (my tanks is almost 2 years old now).

I agree more flow should help you, it seems to me stuff must be floating down to the sand and resting on the sand bed, which shouldnt be possible. The flow should be high enough to keep particles floating in the water column to be sucked up by filtration machines. I turn my flow down during the daytime to accommodate my clam, but during the night my tank has very high flow, around 40x turnover.

 

[Kial]

I also used caribsea live sand and didnt rinse it (the instructions on the bag say "do not rinse" so I just followed instructions) but I dont really remember having this problem (my tanks is almost 2 years old now).

I agree more flow should help you, it seems to me stuff must be floating down to the sand and resting on the sand bed, which shouldnt be possible. The flow should be high enough to keep particles floating in the water column to be sucked up by filtration machines. I turn my flow down during the daytime to accommodate my clam, but during the night my tank has very high flow, around 40x turnover.

Yeah I'm struggling with flow in this tank. It's either too low or too high! What I have it on now seems to be OK for the corals but definitely not high enough for the sand