How Healthy is Your Bottom?

[eatbreakfast]

I often see new reefers advised to clean their substrate. In my experience, this is not a "best practice" unless the size of the substrate is relatively large. But for most of us that use sand, I find in counterproductive.

I'm not just talking about deep sand beds either, where you can see visible zones at various depths. But even prettu shallow sand beds have more microfauna than just beneficial bacteria. Amphipods and copepods can be seen in little micropockets in the sand. Small, beneficial scavengers and filter feeders can be found in sand beds less than 1.5."

So it surprises me to see people advised to clean their sand or even add sand sifting stars, which eat that microfauna. A healthy microfauna population keeps the sandbed cleaner than a hobbyist doing it as maintainence.

 

[Ruben's Reef]

I agree. I have over a year with my reef and never touch the sand. I have a lots of copepods and my lawnmover blenny keep it super clean but also buried my corals.

 

[Anirban]

My guess will be for new tanks possibly no. Let the sand bed build some microfauna and then after a year possibly do some maintenance but still when you do it you are actually taking out alot of the good things too.

I am possibly not the best person to comment as I run a barebottom ...lol

 

[Dsnakes]

I like to think mine is healthy. I don’t vacuum it at all. I do, however, stir it every week to kick up stuff and keep it looking clean.

I don’t do water changes so I rely on heavy skimming and the refugium to keep things in hand.

I have a lot of nassarius, cerith, and a couple fighting conchs which cruise through the sand as well.

 

[BeejReef]

Current thought seems to be that eventually... 4-6 years... the sandbed hits its limit and one may expect hard to control nitrate and phosphate... "old tank syndrome?"

My tentative plan is to siphon out, rinse, and replace about 1/5th of the sandbed each year... just working left to right. The Melev's Reef guy is a proponent of washing and re-using sand and seems to feel it can be done without destroying the bacteria.
Ofc, my plan may well change as the understanding of the hobby evolves. Overall, I figure anything very gradual can't do much harm. Honestly, in 4 years, I'd hope to be upgrading tanks anyhow.

 

[hotashes]

This one could be interesting @brandon429

A.

 

[Crabs McJones]

Same, I don't ever clean my sandbed, but only half of my tank has sand in it. Under the rocks and behind the rockwork, in front is bare bottom. My 75 (if i ever get it setup) is going to be sanded. And unless I run into a major issue, I'll likely never clean the sandbed on that one either.

 

[eatbreakfast]

Current thought seems to be that eventually... 4-6 years... the sandbed hits its limit and one may expect hard to control nitrate and phosphate... "old tank syndrome?"

My tentative plan is to siphon out, rinse, and replace about 1/5th of the sandbed each year... just working left to right. The Melev's Reef guy is a proponent of washing and re-using sand and seems to feel it can be done without destroying the bacteria.
Ofc, my plan may well change as the understanding of the hobby evolves. Overall, I figure anything very gradual can't do much harm. Honestly, in 4 years, I'd hope to be upgrading tanks anyhow.

I find its the people that clean their sand that end up with a problematic sand bed. It gets silty and compacts. Whereas the sand bottoms that are left alone have a variety of life, which keeps the sandbed healthy and viable, well beyond the 4-6 yrs.

And if debris accumulation is an issue, that speaks to insufficient flow or too much feeding.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Great discussion! I don't clean my sand bed...probably just because I'm lazy though.

 

[Gareth elliott]

And if debris accumulation is an issue, that speaks to insufficient flow or too much feeding.

I think the sand cleaning is usually a response when after the above reasons detritus accumulates long enough that the the other methods of nutrient control become almost molasses speed. If your sand bed has years of build up, rock falls over and suddenly you have .3 ppm phosphate it’s difficult to get that back to normal levels via wc, gfo. Even when combined with more flow and decreased feeding.
Hard to sell just control nutrient import and in a year the tank will look better

Another common issue i see is the over dosing of 2 part leading to partial sand solidification. Without some physical labor this is difficult to return to sand.

 

[hart24601]

This has been my experience. Locally over the years I have helped quite a few people diagnosis issues with their tank. Many times it's the same story, tank been running a few years, they started mixed generally adding more sps that did well. Then growth slows and they have recession. Many times they have coral on the same bed.

I now ask them to siphon one bucket of the sand and take a look at it. More than 90% of the time this water and detritus from the sand makes you gag. They clean the sand and issues stop.

This is why I suggest cleaning sand, because I have seen it probably a dozen times over the past decade and the vast majority of the time the issue was the sand and cleaning it resolved the issue.

Of course I'm sure there are things they could have done to prevent the problem, feed less, not stack rock so dense, less coral on sand so it's more accessible and so on.

However when it comes right down to it for people having issues with mature tanks it's the #1 issue I have seen in person (which I trust more than helping online because it's hard to get the full details of a system online). I just can't ignore how often it's happened and how well cleaning resolved the issue.

 

[BeejReef]

In the ocean, presumably, the old sand gets incredibly nasty and gunky, eventually becomes buried, and increasing pressure and heat turn it into rock, fossils, natural gas, and oil. New sand forms on top from sedimentation and such.

Maybe w a 12' deep tank, you could sell chaeto, frags, and sweet crude!!

 

[eatbreakfast]

This has been my experience. Locally over the years I have helped quite a few people diagnosis issues with their tank. Many times it's the same story, tank been running a few years, they started mixed generally adding more sps that did well. Then growth slows and they have recession. Many times they have coral on the same bed.

I now ask them to siphon one bucket of the sand and take a look at it. More than 90% of the time this water and detritus from the sand makes you gag. They clean the sand and issues stop.

This is why I suggest cleaning sand, because I have seen it probably a dozen times over the past decade and the vast majority of the time the issue was the sand and cleaning it resolved the issue.

Of course I'm sure there are things they could have done to prevent the problem, feed less, not stack rock so dense, less coral on sand so it's more accessible and so on.

However when it comes right down to it for people having issues with mature tanks it's the #1 issue I have seen in person (which I trust more than helping online because it's hard to get the full details of a system online). I just can't ignore how often it's happened and how well cleaning resolved the issue.

My experience has been the opposite. I take care of fish tanks as a job. What I see when taking over a service from another company is that those that siphon their sand end up with slimy feeling sand devoid of microfauna. And in those tanks when taking out the sand the water is a gross brown. Comparing that to tanks where the sand bed hadn't been disturbed and has healthy microfauna, any cloudiness from the sand is more of a milky white.

But that's where husbandry in the first place is essential. Overfeeding for years does have a cumulative affect that takes almost as long to resolve as it took to create, and thats where extreme measures of replacing the sand bed are needed. But if properly done in the first place, the bed can be kept for along time without that sort of maintainence or replacing.

 

[hart24601]

What I see leads to more issues in the hobby than anything else is the 'never' state of mind. That is when someone becomes locked into a practice and refuses to consider anything else and it even happens when it comes to looks and livestock.

 

[brandon429]

Great thread Eatbreakfast as sandbed usage is still hotly debated and researched in the hobby and most new reefkeepers have to cross a threshold of how they're going to approach sandbed biology.





sandbed diversity sounds awesome and helpful and it occurs in nature, but samples of 25 average sandbeds from reef tanks show no moving animals - we have the pictures documented in this sand rinse thread below which show it as handfuls of mud.

its rare to find the beds full of balanced, active life like the reference materials/books showed all reefs destined to become. Ideal and lucky reefs become that

res publica just needs to clean out the waste and clouding to have all their issues solved, vs just leaving things to compile.

within the first three years, sandbeds never seem too bad usually.

*that technique is growing however, hands off adjustments using biodiversity....we await their 20 page cure work threads to see when its up to speed with manual cleaning outcomes and happiness. people are seeking less work means to be invader free, balanced competing animals is likely to work

occasionally there are worms, and pods, but not routinely, we show.

We show that those animals didn't prevent not one instance of cyano in a challenge tank either... in fact they caused the long term hesitation that allowed for the cyano to blanket them and the whole tank ~

so it comes down to this:

given a perfectly working, uninvaded reef, no matter how that was attained, luck or by skill, then a sandbed chock full of visible worms and pods and true ant farm style diversity looks great and functions great.

If you are an average Joe or Polly reefer like I am, you better clean that just as you routinely clean your mouth if you don't want a reef full of cavities.

There's idealism and then there's real world presentation of a hundred reefs:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445


The masses who present with tons of detritus, no worms, hardly any pods, and just invasions literally had no help.

all the books of the 90s said their reefs/dsb's would turn into an ideal Pandora of awesomeness but it really just smells real bad and kills/feeds waste for like every normal tank in existence I dunno

 

[Paul B]

I love my biodiversity so I limit my cleanings to mostly when I move, like every 35 years.
Some of my sand, or gravel has been in there since the 60s.
I run a reverse UG filter so I do have to stir it up maybe once or twice a year and suck out some detritus but I try not to do it too often or to well. But do to my RUGF I need to stir it to keep the channels open.

 

[hart24601]

I love my biodiversity so I limit my cleanings to mostly when I move, like every 35 years.
Some of my sand, or gravel has been in there since the 60s.
I run a reverse UG filter so I do have to stir it up maybe once or twice a year and suck out some detritus but I try not to do it too often or to well. But do to my RUGF I need to stir it to keep the channels open.

I remember you posting about the "hurricane" you make every 6 months or so, that gave me the impression you supported removing detritus from sand as I thought you gave these hurricanes a lot of credit to your longevity. (Although my memory isn't what it used to be, can look it up I guess) However in this post it sounds like you are the opposite view and don't deep clean at all.

Edit here is one of the articles I was thinking about but think I saw similar comments in other posts you have done.

https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/old-tank-syndrome.184/

 

[brandon429]

Another key contextual arrangement for all recommends in reefing is volume

Proponents of a given method rarely relate any physicality to tank volume but it matters tremendously. They state worms and waste are good, end of story, because a multi hundred gallon dilution system says so.

We know for example that nano reefs will not run well with total hands off methods....they'll run about 4 years or less and then crash due to cyano. So in the very least proponents need to be specific on the types of reefs that run their methods because its not nano reefs...and all we did was adjust the volume portion.

it would seem that all advocates for hands off reefing are not long term nano reefer keepers, they may be nano reef owners, but I don't know of any ten year hands off nano reefs only the cleaned ones endured all the challenges over time

*I already know about Sanjay's 20 yr untouched nano, always make room for stat outliers. there aren't threads of 20 yr nanos untouched, there's one. acknowledged.

In every case Im referring what Joe or Polly can expect right now and over the next few years based on how they choose to interpret and apply sandbed biology in their reef tanks.

The reason we recommend people keep their reefs clean vs stored up is because that is the only way you can manage large production threads and not have any losses or invasions.

clean reefing is safer long term reefing even if its less inclusive of sandbed microfauna says massive work threads, but tanks that pull it off with natural balance and don't have to work at it are rarer and ideal where accessible. I haven't figured out how to communicate that method to others and get as tight results/no loss/no invasion.

 

[JimSRT4]

I personally don't clean my sand bed unless I find its got way too much junk built up. I find that a mature bed with the microfauna and other critters do a good job of cleaning themselves. I have also had nassarius snails, cukes, and the such in tanks where there is a heavy fish bioload.

 

[Dsnakes]

In regards to this topic, is stirring considered ‘cleaning’? I don’t consider myself to ‘clean’ necessarily, as I don’t remove any sand or water.

I do place a new filter pad in the sump before stirring and remove it afterwards though.

Perhaps I’m in the middle ground on the subject.

Does stirring actually remove microfauna, or just move it around to settle back in.