Sand bed issues

[tosteetos]

Hello everyone, recently my sand has started to turn black, kinda moldy looking, I am attaching link to a video here for you to take a look.

My tank has been setup for about 6 months now, my concern is if I should vacum it out or what can I do to remedy the situation, it's not pleasant to look at at all, I've had trouble having the wife onboard with the idea of having a reef in the livingroom and now she's not liking the way it's turning out to look heh.

Help a fellow newbie reefer stay in the hobby before wife :uzi: the tank.

Cheers,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-4Sfp14q6M

[iamwrasseman]

yes siphone it out of the grave with a sand vac .what do you have for livestock and how much do you feed them ? what type of filtration do you have ?any water paramiters that you can post would help too.

[tosteetos]

thanks for the reply.

The tank is a 90g, I only have about 8 hermits, 10 snails, 1 monti frag, 2 zoa frags, 1 acro frag, I still have no fish though.

I just have a skimmer for filtration, however it was off for the last 3 weeks as I was rebuilding my sump. so basically only circulation pumps were operating, no filtration, I do not feed anything as of yet I do have a lot of visible detritus on the sand from the hermits and snails I guess.

[iamwrasseman]

its been set up for six months ,have you gone through a cycle yet ? are you testing for it ?

[tosteetos]

yeah, it's been setup with CUC for about 4.5 months, I cycled with LR. everything is living and apparently doing ok, aside from the corals looking dull. I guess it is due to me not feeding the tank.

[tosteetos]

so should I siphon out that top layer of the sand? I am concerned with any adverse effects that could bring.

Also, I am considering already adding my first fish, I was thinking of getting a goby to stir up the sand, I have about 2.5 inches of sand, would this be a good idea at this point?

thanks.

[njdevilsfan]

it doesnt look 4 to 6 inces to me
i would add more and get it closer to 6
but if not get it a lot lower or out
but be carful what you release vacumming it out

[tosteetos]

thanks for the replies, anyone else care to pitch in with your own experience/advice?

[ir_danno22]

I think I have the same stuff in my tank but it forms under the rocks that are sunken into the sand. does it look blackish/blue?

[flyby1]

I read about this in another post hope this helps.
Not certain its the same thing.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1894064

[Uncle Salty 05]

Did you seed with GARF's "grunge"?

[tosteetos]

No, I didn't use GARF's grunge, I used the sand from an established tank, rinsed it for about 30 mins on fresh water.

anyone else care to pitch in? I want to siphon it out but I'm not sure what could happen, this formed just in the last 2 weeks or so.

Also there are a lot of pods on the sand that I am afraid I'm going to suck them out.

What do you guys think I should do?

thanks.

[pktech]

since you have no fish, I wouldn't be concerned with "stirring" things up - do a massive water change w/ rodi water & get the water balanced again w/ the proper trace elements.

[Uncle Salty 05]

No, I didn't use GARF's grunge, I used the sand from an established tank, rinsed it for about 30 mins on fresh water.

anyone else care to pitch in? I want to siphon it out but I'm not sure what could happen, this formed just in the last 2 weeks or so.

Also there are a lot of pods on the sand that I am afraid I'm going to suck them out.

What do you guys think I should do?

thanks.

Thought I saw the tell tale brown gravel that grunge has in it.
If you rinsed the sand from an established sand in fresh water you killed off the beneficial bacteria it contained.
I would siphon it out, it has been my experienece that once pods are established you couldn't remove them all if you tried.

[neoalchemist74]

Vacume the top 1/2 " don't remove it just clean it and increase your flow along the bottom half of the tank.

[Toddrtrex]

No, I didn't use GARF's grunge, I used the sand from an established tank, rinsed it for about 30 mins on fresh water.

anyone else care to pitch in? I want to siphon it out but I'm not sure what could happen, this formed just in the last 2 weeks or so.

Also there are a lot of pods on the sand that I am afraid I'm going to suck them out.

What do you guys think I should do?

thanks.

I gravel vac the sandbeds (( all of them are shallow ~ 2 inches )) with each weekly water change, the pods won't all be sucked out;

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y189/toddrtrex/33/pods.jpg