Sand Bed

[dochoot]

I have a stable, successful (by my standards) tank for many years. I has a dsb which may or may not be relevant to that. Seems like all I read about DSB is anecdotal. So, I will add to it.

I had to excavate a small section of my sand bed for a plumbing issue. With in 12 hours, both my tangs and a coral beauty died. The rest of the fish are fine.

 

[FurrierTransform]

did you smell a sulfur or rotten egg smell when you stirred your sand? Hydrogen Sulfide is a byproduct of live sand and should not be stirred up. You may have had a dip in pH when you did that. I'm speculating.

 

[C4ctus99]

Did they spend time lying on the bottom breathing heavy before they died? Seen several posts before about those symptoms after messing with sandbed (and had it happen myself with a young sandbed).

I try not to mess with the sandbed with fish in the tank anymore…

 

[dochoot]

Did not smell anything. Tank was all clouded up so could not really see fish well. It was unavoidable that I had to dig in the sand bed. Should have done a water change at same time.

 

[brandon429]

This is very very helpful information thank you for posting, we have reef tank surgery threads for moving reefs, upgrading, basic handling where we are very careful with sand, this loss related to sand is a real risk pattern. Your testimony will help others avoid loss

 

[brandon429]

Also fascinating: ammonia isn't the killer, sandbeds don't store ammonia. There's unknown causatives associated with detritus waste that nobody has identified: nobody knows what the actual cause is, we just know it's associated with stored up organic waste

 

[C4ctus99]

Did not smell anything. Tank was all clouded up so could not really see fish well. It was unavoidable that I had to dig in the sand bed. Should have done a water change at same time.

Clouded up fish tanks with old sand beds don’t seem to be good for the fish. I lost a new stressed out damsel kicking up some sand rearranging rockwork

 

[brandon429]

I vote it's one of these causatives:

Bacterial states of decay/ poisonous compounds liberated into the water formerly stratified when the bed was hands off

Or latent disease somehow held in the sand

Gasses? Not sure hydrogen sulfide is as common as we'd guess but maybe so

One thing is for sure, sandbed waste is powerful substrate for excess bacteria.

 

[dochoot]

It is interesting. 14 years old. When I started there was a lot of back and forth about having a DSB In which people would melt down arguing about. Hesitant to even post about DSB. Such a geek hobby, is their record of parallel systems, one with a DSB and one with out in otherwise same conditions? My leopard wrasse is pro DSB!

 

[907_Reefer]

How deep is this sand bed and how long has the tank been running, out of curiosity? Sorry about the fish!

 

[brandon429]

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

You know why I'm impressed? Because that final assembly tank looks empty/ no water/ that's the sign of one heck of a pre rinse! Well done and thank you so much for the pictures and documentation this is really looking sharp Probably wouldn't come out looking as clean as it did without the...

www.reef2reef.com

check that out. 54 pages of science designed to protect reef tanks from being killed by their sandbeds. it truly is a hot button topic

ironically you'll see: rinsing out people's sandbeds in TAP water is what gives us 54 pages with no deaths/irony

the waste in the bed is so dangerous for some folks (not all, but some obviously) we designed a surgical means of taking apart reef tanks to clean the bed all at once, with no animals in tow. cleaning beds with animals in tow presents a huge risk to the masses. the old information about deep sandbeds isn't correct, or we wouldn't need that huge procedural thread to handle 'reduced minerals' (the claimed final state of sandbed waste from old 90's info)

your issue of fish death by disturbing the bed isn't the majority, it's the minority outcome. most just get cyano and GHA headaches from disturbing bed waste. but, we want a perfect outcome thread...no losses, me not apologizing to anyone for having killed their reef/fish, and the only way to get that among 300+ logged jobs is surgical disassembly rip cleaning. there's no other safe way.

 

[C4ctus99]

Out of curiosity, what depth constitutes DSB?

 

[brandon429]

can you post a pic of your setup so we can see the bed cross section/other details in the pics

 

[dochoot]

New to forum. Will try and post better pic tonight.

 

[brandon429]

really beautiful tank for sure wow

 

[dochoot]

Sand bed goes from 0 to 7 inches depending on water flow. Spot I had to dig out was, of course, the deepest.

 

[dochoot]

Section in fuge is almost 12. I think I hear it ticking.

 

[dochoot]

Section in fuge is almost 12. I think I hear it ticking.

 

[brandon429]

It's a beautiful aged documented system. We're all aiming for that diversity shown. That degree of microorganism inclusion feeds your corals, the sand is a huge repository for those animals, a place where food rains down daily and protection from predating fish happens

Pods will live in sand + system that well aged. It's a true ecosystem just in the sand, these are the positives that jump out from the pic

Left undisturbed that bed may go 25 years, if anyone remembers a poster named AZDesertRat he was a very technical poster always writing about his untouched deep bed which also had pockets of deep pigmentation and animal tracks in the bed.

I can't even say loss of a few fish is worth deconstructing the bed back to clean...hope that shows my intent isn't to rinse every bed on the board back to square one. If you don't plan on accessing it too often/ no harm in continuing the plan. If you feel it's a liability and want a new bed I would like to have the remote job it'll be a massive multi day cleaning effort ordered in a certain way to keep all the rocks and corals and fish alive. If you have to move or upgrade the system we'd like to plan the job in our big rinse thread. But if you don't have immediate access needs there's a strong strong case for just leaving it be. Didn't seem to be harming the tank as it ran hands off, those were the details that stood out in your pic.

There's already been an access test not exactly passed so when it's time for access theres no other method I could recommend to keep the tank alive, rip cleaning is safe but also a giant multi day cleaning hassle in a tank that big . The structured way we access and clean sandbeds is the safest way to address that issue.

 

[dochoot]

Agree. Gonna let this sleeping dog lie.