Dumb question- Cleaning Sand bed

[mickeym]

in my last SW tank, i used crushed coral for a bottom-
I used a tank cleaner-tube vacuum thing. No problem, the coral was too heavy to get sucked into the vacuum.

How do you clean the bottom of sand-bottom tank (get rid of any algae down there) without sucking all the sand into the vacuum?

This is a new tank, so I know the first few months, there will be signs of some nuisance algae....

Thanks!

[kzickovich]

Just do it lightly on the surface. The deeper you go into the sand bed the more sand you will suck up. When I do mine I get about a cup of sand out, I just rise it and place it back into the tank.

[rustybucket145]

How deep is your sand?

[mickeym]

Its not a Deep sand bed, just enough to cover the bottom.

OK, nice to know that I wont suck it all up.. This is literaly a brand new setup...

Thanks!

[harryk]

why would you want to vaccum the sand bed. Your not really supposed to be disturbing the sand bed. you can get snails that will keep it clean for you if it's deep enough. Every time you disturb the bed you release nasty stuff, ammonia, and other nasty stuff. I would just leave it alone

[dileggi]

I was thinking just the opposite, and maybe I'm wrong. I thought Sk8r or someone posted a thread on this a week or so ago. I was under the impression that it's OK to disturb your sandbed...(minimally, of course), as long as it wasn't a deep sand bed, meaning over 5".

As for releasing the anything back into the water column, I was under the impression that even though it's realed back into the water column, it's technically denitrified, if that's the correct term. Meaning, you may test positive, but it's not in toxic form.

Can anyone confirm any of that?

[spike78]

Yeah,

If you have a shallow sand bed, less than an inch, you should have no problems vacuuming, stirring or sifting it. From my understanding, at that depth, you don't have anoxic denitrification happening in the bed to produce anything toxic