Cleaning sand bed ?

[Shaemus]

How often should you clean your sand bed, i've heard once a month and once every 2 weeks ... and i'm guessing you would have to use the siphon gravel cleaners, but i heard also you can just stir the sandbed quick with a rod or something like that, which one is the better method?
Thanks.

Shaemus

 

[Entacmaea]

Hey there, it depends on what you have- if you have a typical reef set-up with live rock and live sand- don't touch the live sand. Disturbing it can disrupt the stratification of its functional zones- and the creatures in the sand "stir" it enough anyway. Here is a link to an interesting article on live sand beds for your reef tank.

http://www.ronshimek.com/Deep%20Sand%20Beds.htm

Some people "stir" the live sand to feed their tank, as the organics will cloud the tank and feed some inverts. But I would again just leave it be.

If you have a fish only tank and have coarser gravel-type substrate, then I guess you would clean it regularly with a siphon, etc. I don't have any experience with that kind of substrate, however, so perhaps someone else can chime in about that.

Thanks, Peter

 

[Shaemus]

thank you very much

 

[Shaemus]

thank you very much

 

[Brian5000]

I did nothing for years and ended up with an aquarium floor composed of about 50% sand and 50% cyanobacteria. Now, every time I do a water change, I siphon some of the sand bed.

If you sand bed is more for asthetics like mine (1-2"), the sand bed won't be harmed by stiring it up because it's not deep enough to have any zones. The different aerobic/anaerobic zones are in deep sand beds (4" or more).

Regardless of how many critters crawl though there, I think detritus gets trapped in the sand bed. It may do nothing in the beginning or maybe cause a few localized algea flare-ups to begin with. If you let it go for a long time (years, like I did), it can eventually (and in my experience suddenly) make a systemic problem.

As, I think, Len suggested in a previous topic, I siphon out part of the sand bed every time. I rinse it out very well and return it to the tank. Since it's only part of the sand bed, it's quickly recolonized by the other parts. The system as a whole never suffers.
_________________
ak47 photos

 

[Entacmaea]

I've never had this kind of detritus problem, but then again I've never had a sand bed for more than 3 years, so Brian's caution might be applicable for sand beds that are older and more for aesthetics- mine was about 4" deep. I also seeded my sand with multiple kits from ipsf.com, inland.aquatics, and garf grunge, so I had a good mix of critters in the sand to process waste, which probably contributed to no detritus problem.

 

[cindre2000]

I have often had a good bit of silt build up in all the shallow sand bed tanks I have worked on. Given good flow, stirring up the sand bed will allow the flow to remove the built up silt. I however, prefer using a gravel-vac occasionally in the worst spots since I not only remove concentrated silt and it leaves the system quickly, but I also get the benefits of a water change on top of that. I normally only do this when I start to see silt build up on top of the sand.

Cyno on the other hand is more of symptom of low flow. In one take I maintain there is a huge amount of silt in the sand (due top the resident panther grouper); however there is no cyno due to the large amount of flow. The tank next to it I added a diamond goby to stir the sand- thus no more cyno.

 

[Anonymous]

If you have a deep sand bed (better than 4") do not syphon or clean. If you have 1-2" syphon it when you do a water chage. If you got between 2 and 4 make up your mind :wink: . IMO with that depth you don't have enough to get the benifits of a DSB and you got to much to be easy to clean. IIRC a DSB really needs to be 6" or deeper to really function as it was intended.

 

[brandonberry]

I can't seem to find the article right now, but I remember reading one not long ago that included a study which showed that there was no significant difference in a sandbed of around 3" versus one deeper. Does anyone else recall seeing this, and if so, do you have the link to the article.

Also, I recently set up a new tank and added about 2" of new sand and about an inch of sand that I had removed from an existing tank that I was taking down. The live sand had the detritus stirred out of it before adding it to the new tank. Within 3 days I already had tons of worm tunnels visible in the sand through the front glass. After only a few weeks, it almost looks healthier than the sand bed in my main tank that has been there for almost 2 years now. I can't help but wonder if my old tank would benefit from removing the sand bed and replacing it in this manner ever couple of years. I know there is bound to be quite a bit of detritus build-up underneath rocks and other low flow places. It seems as if the detritus build-up over time may contribute to a decreased porosity of the substrate and more anoxic zones. I've considered just using a gravel vac to clean the detritus from the top 1/2" of the sand bed every few months. I will probably try this before replacing the sand. I did completely gravel vac a 10g tank a few months ago that was plumbed into my main system. This tank had serious cyano problems on the sandbed even though the other tanks seemed to be fine. The flow and lighting were both good, so I could only conclude that there were excess nutrients in the sandbed from detritus. After vacuuming it, a similar occurance happened to that tank as with my new tank. Within just a couple of days, there were tons of new worm tunnels all in the sand and the appearance of the bed did seem much healthier. Also, the cyano quit growing in that tank. This was by no means a controlled experiment and others may have totally different results. The fact that this 10g tank was plumbed into a 250g+ system probably also helped to stabilize it after the vacuuming.