Ditritus, Husbandry, and sump flow Q's

[Keith P]

Ok,
I have a few Noob questions I was never able to find much info on and I never figured out on my own. Here goes:

With out a filter sock (which I will have on my new setup), how do you remove remove ditritus from a tank? I usually blow my rocks off before I do my water changes. It's not enough though, as it still collects on the sand and around the base of my rock. Should I be vacuuming my sand? I have many snails and hermits (and tiny bristle stars). They don't seem to be helping much..

My next question is about ditritus w/ regards to a sump. I plan on running a small refugium in my sump with only cheato and LR (no sand). I figured if ditritus builds up, I can just blow it off. I also planned on splitting my return pump to feed a phos reactor, chiller, etc. Do I have to worry about ditritus building up within my reactor?

One more out there question. Should I run a filter on the inlet of my return pump (to keep stuff from getting into my reactor) or leave it open (to allow pods and such from the refug to get to the display tank)?

 

[ZANYMASTER]

Don't vacuum the sand.Siphon as much from the sump as you can using a rigid thin tubing like I did with all those baffles it's hard to get at it.You can add a prefilter to the return pump if you want.

 

[mandown123]

should you really not vacuum the sand?

 

[Keith P]

I'm planning on vacuuming the sand. The build up is pretty bad, and it's a nano.

I'm really thinking about long term husbandry and system design.

Is ditritus in the reactor an issue??

 

[da5speed]

Heres what i did, and it worked for me. Im not saying its right thing to do, but it did work for me. If it builds up on the sand bed bad enough, like a thin blanket i would take air tube and siphon off as much as i could without taking that much sand. Any sand taken out i discarded. I also tried turning off the light for two days after i siphoned ouff the sand bed. Then what i did was ever 2 days i take the claw handle that i have and comb threw the sand very slowly so that all the bubble that were building off under the sand came up. I also have a shoulder tang that loves to take a mouth full of sand and swim with it for a minute then spit it out all over my rock. I found that the crabs and snails do nothing for this. Again im not vac and im not trying to stir up the sand im just getting the bubbles out. Hope this helps.

 

[Keith P]

I also have a shoulder tang that loves to take a mouth full of sand and swim with it for a minute then spit it out all over my rock.

Thanks for the suggestions..

I would imagine a sand shower sucks to clean off of the rocks and corals all the time, no?

 

[da5speed]

every day i blow the rocks off and he does it while im blowing them off. Its like cleaning up after a little child lol, but i love him

 

[JJSBLM]

i loled @ your little story about your tang..

if this is a new tank, yes i would vaccum the sand but very lightly. if it's an established nano... leave it be


either way & beef up you CUC

 

[Keith P]

The nano is about 14 months old. It has caked up ditritus

 

[ghostshadow]

keith how much flow do you have in the display? i really turned up the wick when i had my 18gal and detritus buildup on the sandbed was minimal. the softies didn't mind.

i wouldn't put a filter on the return.. you want those pods going up into the tank

dan

 

[Keith P]

i wouldn't put a filter on the return.. you want those pods going up into the tank

Do I have to worry about stuff getting into my phos reactor which will be on the same circuit?

 

[ghostshadow]

nah nothing to worry about. i replace the media about once a month anyway.