Please share your secrets to beautiful sandbeds!!!

LesPoissons · Oct 27, 2019

Hi,
So some of you amazing reefers post pics and your sandbeds are clean and white and beautiful. (Meanwhile, mine is full of broken dead coral pieces, old snail shells, rubble, discarded shells from hermit crabs etc. lol On top of that I have some brown patches where the flow is low!) Curious- what are your secrets to a crisp clean sand bed?! Share please!

Auquanut · Oct 27, 2019

Of course occasional vacuuming of the the sandbed and general housekeeping help, but don't necessarily trust every picture you see. We all have imperfections in our tanks that the camera doesn't capture. Show us yours. As far as the brown patches go, a picture might help, as well as changing up your flow some. I wouldn't go too crazy with the flow though if your corals seem to be happy.

miamijaaz · Oct 27, 2019

A fighting conch or two will do wonders in cleaning the algae from your sand bed.

BeachBumm · Oct 27, 2019

Use Vibrant for Reef or Vibrant for Saltwater if you only have fish with live rock and I guarantee if you dose according to the instructions , your sand bed will STAY clean! At least it has for me. I have a 75 gal. reef . Something you might could try .

Katrina71 · Oct 27, 2019

Photoshop.

King Turkey · Oct 27, 2019

diamond goby

Tamberav · Oct 27, 2019

Some just look nice since they siphon or stir it and do a water change and then take a photo. Doesn't mean it's always perfect!

LesPoissons · Oct 27, 2019

Katrina71 said:
Photoshop.

Lol

LesPoissons · Oct 27, 2019

Auquanut said:
Of course occasional vacuuming of the the sandbed and general housekeeping help, but don't necessarily trust every picture you see. We all have imperfections in our tanks that the camera doesn't capture. Show us yours. As far as the brown patches go, a picture might help, as well as changing up your flow some. I wouldn't go too crazy with the flow though if your corals seem to be happy.

It’s more a general question.

I know I could clean up my “mess” and redirect my flow but my corals are all happy right now. I recently added a fighting conch too but was just seeing if there was a “recipe “ for a crisp looking sand bed.

LesPoissons · Oct 27, 2019

BeachBumm said:
Use Vibrant for Reef or Vibrant for Saltwater if you only have fish with live rock and I guarantee if you dose according to the instructions , your sand bed will STAY clean! At least it has for me. I have a 75 gal. reef . Something you might could try .

Thanks, I did use vibrant to get rid of some gha and it worked amazingly well. I could keep it going but more was just interested in what others do. Like how do people have no bits of live rock or invert shells or coral pieces in the sand?! Lol. Photoshop/editing may be a factor.

fcmatt · Oct 27, 2019

Tamberav said:
Some just look nice since they siphon or stir it and do a water change and then take a photo. Doesn't mean it's always perfect!

^^^^^^^ this.

It is natural to want to share pics of your tank when it is optimal and cleaned. If you then saw their tank 3 weeks later when they are super busy with life you would be like ooooh

BornHandy · Oct 27, 2019

This guy handles it for me. This was even during a nasty brown slime outbreak! If you look, you can see it on the rock.

Elliott Comans · Oct 27, 2019

A mixture of sand sifting starfish, strombs and my goby constantly turning the sand over

Fishurama · Oct 27, 2019

No sand is perfect, but get the flow right and have any type of sand sifting goby and other sand sifters like fighting conchs,nassarius snail, sand sifting starfish,walking dendro(coral) , a few wrasse that sleep in the sand will help. I never vacuum my sand bed and its pretty good. I do have some slight/normal green film algae just to show my nitrates/phosphates arent too low either. I have current USA pro lights which aren't greatest which may help.

Waters · Oct 28, 2019

Remove it

. When I did have one, I would vacuum it weekly when doing water changes.

Daniel@R2R · Oct 28, 2019

I just pulled mine and rinsed it. LOL Got lots of crap outta there.

Roosterjack · Oct 28, 2019

Diamond Goby +1

WallyB · Oct 28, 2019

crabcore said:
diamond goby

Yes. I had one. Best sand cleaner in the world, but there is a CATCH.

He will turn the sand bed over and over and sift out any nutrients from it. Sparkling white sand is all you will have.

Problems is after while he will run out of food in the sand bed, or simply get bored and will dig/sift like crazy. Making piles of sand dunes. Will dig holes/cave under rock and maybe rocks will shift.

And the worse part (why I removed him) was he started filling his mouth. Rising high and dumping sand on my rocks, and corals. Worst was the cup shaped corals.

Total destruction, but nice clean sand EVERYWHERE.

ReeferMaddness843 · Oct 28, 2019

Remove it and go bare bottom. Muahahaha. There I said it. Honestly I don’t know, just had to play devil’s advocate. lol

King Turkey · Oct 28, 2019

WallyB said:
Yes. I had one. Best sand cleaner in the world, but there is a CATCH.

He will turn the sand bed over and over and sift out any nutrients from it. Sparkling white sand is all you will have.

Problems is after while he will run out of food in the sand bed, or simply get bored and will dig/sift like crazy. Making piles of sand dunes. Will dig holes/cave under rock and maybe rocks will shift.

And the worse part (why I removed him) was he started filling his mouth. Rising high and dumping sand on my rocks, and corals. Worst was the cup shaped corals.

Total destruction, but nice clean sand EVERYWHERE.

I have not run into that problem. but I do feed mine 2 times day. I will drop large sinking shrimp pellets maybe 2 at a time to make sure he is well fed. I put empty snail shells and some small rocks he likes to play with and rearrange. I will nock down his rocks so he stays occupied with rearranging them every so often like maybe once a month.