weekly water change - siphoning question

[mbr]

Each week I do a 10% waterchange to my reef tank. Each time I have been syphoning from the sand at the bottom sifting through the top 1cm. Am I right in doing this? Any advice greatly received.

Many thanks
Mark

 

[Mikef1]

I dont siphon my sand at all. I am guessing you have an algae problem right now and its covering you sand. You need to get critters like hermits to take care of that. When you siphon out that sand you are siphoning out all you beneficial critters and bacteria.

 

[Jolieve]

Depends on what's growing on the sand Mike. Some forms of algae, hermits and snails won't touch. Cyanobacteria needs to be siphoned off, as do dinoflagellates. Do this gently... removing as little sand as possible.

If you just want to keep the sandbed free of detrius, then I'd suggest looking into critters that move the sand around, such as nassarius snails.

J.

 

[Baianotang]

N° 1) Do you have a deep sand bed? :twisted:
N° 2) How many Gallons? :twisted:
N° 3) What Simmer do you have? :twisted:
N° 4) Critters? :twisted:


I need more information :evil:

 

[mbr]

Thanks for all the info.

As I was doing my water change tonight I tested the water I was putting in - I was a Purity-on-tap Reverse Osmosis Unit, Reef Crystals (enriched brand) then add Korallin Min+ designed for RO water.
The new water had a pH of 8.0 and a dKH of 16 - no wonder I have problem with my readings.

Am I doing something wrong?

My tank is Juwel Rio 300litres, has an inch of sand, cannister filter, wet and dry (though this is really just for circulation as I took out most of the media after having added the recommended level of live rock), red sea prism skimmer, internal filter, 3 powerheads. The tank is 12 months old and is generally running well with fish (Regal Tang, Yellow Tang, 2 damsels, Flame Angel, Cleaner Wrasse and yellow angel) and corals (2 xenia, finger coral, and various polyps). I also have 1 cleaner shrimp (I lost one last week), various snails and 4 red leg hermit crabs



Many thanks
Mark

 

[Anonymous]

Mm.. Prizm skimmer not so popular.

Most folks seem to like good old tried and true Instant Ocean, but I don't know that would make such a huge difference. If you're really having trouble with algae, then I would look to excess nitrate and phosphorous readings.

Lastly, there is nothing wrong with vacuuming small bits of your sandbed, and can go a long way towards preventing compaction. I'd wager that, as long as done carefully, you can go deeper, unless you have a very well-established anoxic region.

 

[Neal]

when siphoning a sand bed you should siphon it in shifts do 1/3 wait a day or two do 1/3 third and so on this gives time for the critters to move in to the clean section before getting siphoned out. I have read by doing this there are higher numbers of pods in the new/clean sections than in the unclear. So they don't like living in **** and slime algea huh go figure :lol:

 

[Anonymous]

That kind of depends on how deep the bed is, with very deep beds you may not want to be quite so vigorous.

What is VERY helpful is to use a very long siphon tube. They're ungainly, but allow fine-grained sand particles to fall back down the tube before being sucked out.

 

[Neal]

Just to be clear just siphone the extreme surface no more than absolutely neededincase I was unclear :roll: