New sand/cleaning old?

[terrell wohlrab]

Hey guys, so a couple of weeks ago I got into a VERY bad war with some. "algae" forgot the name.(black/purple slime with oxygen bubbles that cover litterally everything) ended up wiping that out to be rewarded with dinos covering my rocks. And now that seems to be gone as well. And all I'm left with now is green algea covering my entire sand bed.

Question. Is it possible to just remove and replace my bed? Or will this start a cycle?

 

[Murica]

Could, that's a lot of new bacteria being introduced at once. I just made my tank bare bottom, probably the best thing I've ever done to my tank. Zero algae issues now

 

[nervousmonkey]

You can remove your sandbed, but it will take some work. Need to be careful with releasing the nutrients/toxins/organics/inorganic buildup in the sandbed. How deep is it and how old is it?
@saltyfilmfolks what do you think? Remove part of it at a time? Depending on size of tank/sandbed/depth of sandbed you could remove 1/4 at a time, being very careful to remove and do a pretty big water change afterwards.

What are your parameters? Specifically looking at NO3 and PO4, and once you start removing it, your ammonia levels. You will definitely start a cycle of something, but it will be a result of removal of waste buildup that is completely dependent on how old your tank is, how big it is, how deep your sandbed is, what your NO3 and PO4 levels are now and what they have been historically as the sandbed is a sink for inorganics like NO3 and PO4 as well as all kinds of organics.

The problems you are having are not completely related to your sandbed, so removing it will not necessarily solve those problems, although it will certainly alleviate the problems in the long run. In the short term though, you will create some issues that can only be corrected by water changes, heavy use of GAC to remove the bad stuff, heavy skimming, maybe GFO, etc. etc.

What started these issues?

 

[mohammad.sga]

Just use phosphate remover like exportphos bw or something like that and if your light is old t5, change them with new one.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

? Remove part of it at a time? Depending on size of tank/sandbed/depth of sandbed

yup this.
The recurring algae aftermaths are the probably what folks would call a mini cycle. When In fact a mini cycle is the reintroduction of a large ammoina source usually from stirring up an untouched bed.

The problems you are having are not completely related to your sandbed, so removing it will not necessarily solve those problems,

Yup probably.


Depending on the size of the tank it could ba easy or difficult. My 30 gal takes a day to rebuild.

 

[terrell wohlrab]

10g tank. ~5 months..... Started with crushed coral but switched to sand probably 2 months ago.

What I'm looking to do isint "cure" the problem I know I need to get on my numbers and make sure I'm on top of maintnance to stop this from happening.. I never ever had an issue with algea with the coral bed.

I'm just looking to clean it redo the sand to get the last little bit of it out instead of spending hours picking at it

 

[terrell wohlrab]

10g tank. ~5 months..... Started with crushed coral but switched to sand probably 2 months ago.

What I'm looking to do isint "cure" the problem I know I need to get on my numbers and make sure I'm on top of maintnance to stop this from happening.. I never ever had an issue with algea with the coral bed.

I'm just looking to clean it redo the sand to get the last little bit of it out instead of spending hours picking at it

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

IMO your going to have some ugly time after adding sand in general. These chemical reasons for it. Yes you could add a uv gfo and stir sand daily. But one the sand is coated with bacteria and micro flora and fauna it will settle in to a normal.
I'll assume your doing well already as we're just talking about a lil cyano and diatoms.
Nutrints kinda don't play into it in a way. Even super low nutrients wouldn't cure it entirely. Starving it yes. But those would be angry fish.

I don't belive it was addressed but I'm going to assume it was an all dry rock tank. The downfall to those is even though there's enough bacteria to cycle ammonia there almost nothing to process waste. The bacteria is just coating the rock not penetrating it. So nitrogen and phosphate are readily available fertilizers and there a huge amount of Carbon sources both mineral and gases plus the trace minerals coming of the aragonite rock and sand.
So quite a bit of it is just patience and balancing what goes into the tank.

 

[terrell wohlrab]

nope. all live rock, about 20lbs of it. also used caribsea live sand.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

nope. all live rock, about 20lbs of it. also used caribsea live sand.

Weird. I do know a lot of folks get the brown sand after a time when adding it. A coupe of friends took bets on when the cyano would start.

How's the filtration and flow. Are you a sand vacccuemr and stirred or other.

 

[Brew12]

nope. all live rock, about 20lbs of it. also used caribsea live sand.

I used caribsea live sand and know a few other people who have used it. We almost all have problems with algae and unusual alk consumption from bacteria. I would be hard pressed to recommend using it to anyone. I just don't think they have good control of the bacteria that populates their sand since it is made "live" in a very artificial manner.

That said, it is a fairly short term problem. Control your nutrients, vacuum the bed fairly regularly, and don't do anything that resembles carbon dosing. Your problems should clear up.

 

[terrell wohlrab]

i have a cheap hang on the back filter, i actually use active carbon in my filter with some floss. should i not be doing that? and i also just have a basic hand filter for when i do water changes. i usually mix the bed up a tad when sucking it, and then try to catch any big particles in a net before sucking the water out

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

IMO yea that works well.
Double check how you load the floss in the hob. It should be pulling a ton every week or two. If not change the order of the floss and sponge. And you can add a polishing with a floss across the front of the outlet longwise.
I always kept the carbon in the bottom

IMO the key to using mechanical filtration only is to have really good mechanical filtration and keep it clean and easy to clean.