My 80 gallon tank is relatively new (4-5 months old now). Most people who see my tank in person or in photos are amazed at how clear and white my sand is, they ask how I achieve it. To be honest im not sure but I'll describe what I have and what I do.
My cuc is pretty small, 1 sand sifting star, 3 nassarius snails, ~6 stomatella snails (hitchhikers and rapid breeders), 1 turbo snail and 2 strombus snails
The tank cycled quickly with Dr Tims, and was started with man made dry rock and brand new dry sand (red sea fine white sand)
I had very mild cyano or diatoms in my first 1-2 month, followed by almost complete wipe out of any trace of it. I have basically no algae anywhere in the display and only a light film on my glass after 2-3 days which i remove with a magnetic glass cleaner very easily.
For the brief period where i did have some cyano or diatoms, i would rake the sand every few days to manually turn it over. It would grow back fast but it looked nice after raking.
I run an algae turf scrubber in my sump which reduces my nitrates to 0 every day, i dose nitrate every morning sufficient to push it back to 0.5-0.7 ish (nitrate tests are so hard to read at the low end)
- salinity at 1.027 (people tell me this is on the high end? I used Red Sea black bucket for the initial fill and water changes, when that ran out switched to blue bucket)
- alkalinity at 6-7.5DKH (would prefer it to be more stable but still dialing in based on consumption and running kalk in my ATO currently and its not really keeping up so I manually dose 2 part every few days to keep my levels dropping too low)
- calcium at 390-425
- magnesium started at 1500 and over the life of the tank has now dropped to somewhere between 1400 and 1500. I have never dosed mag and the only top up source has been water changes. Black bucket has elevated mag levels, I expect it to start dropping now that there is a fair bit of coral in the tank and im using blue bucket for water changes
- nitrate at 0-0.5 (i dose 4ml of nitrate every morning)
- i dont have a phosphate test but i would guess its low
- I do a 10% water change maybe once a fortnight at the moment? As I have no need for nutrient export via water change, and major elements are maintained through Kalk, I really only do them for trace elements at the moment. Soon I will start dosing some trace element products and may cease water changes all together or do them very rarely.
My flow is maybe what most people would classify as "low-medium to medium" but its still enough to create 'sand dunes' and eventually expose the glass bottom at the front of my tank after a few days, whenever I can be bothered i rake it back. I run my gyre no higher than 50% capacity, any more and the sand gets blown way more than I want.
Here is a very recent FTS that show the sand, these are pretty color accurate to reality under my lights during their peak brightness
