Removing my Sandbed

[Jacob D]

Last weekend I started to remove my sandbed. The 2 clams that I have have been stirring it up by opening and closing rapidly. They basically made a crater in the sand about 6 inches around and all the way to the bottom of the tank. This caused all kinds of issues and I suspect it has been to blame for my turf algae problems.

So as I said last weekend I got started. My plan is to remove all but about 3/4" of sand, some spots the bottom may become visible as the water pushes the sand wherever it ends up. So far this has caused even worse algae problems but I expected that as it's impossible not to stir anything up while doing this. I think it will take a few months to get most of it out but I'm looking forward to less nutrient problems in the future (fingers crossed).

If anyone is wondering - luckily for me I put all my rocks on the glass and put sand around them when I set the tank up, so no worries about rock avalanches from removing the sand. Now it's just a matter of time an patience for the tank to get back on the right track again.

[Bamm Bamm]

Jacob I'd HIGHLY recomend doing several water changes over the next few weeks with all the nasty stuff that inadvertantly got stirred up and put in the water column while pulling the sand out.. Otherwise you could have a nice mess on your hands,,from expierence..Dan

[Jacob D]

Thanks Dan. That is my thought too. I'm doing about 20g each week (usually I do about 5g a week).

[Bamm Bamm]

yeah that should keep it in check for ya.. Those sand beds contain some nasty stuff sometimes... Hey could you possibly bring me a cup of LS to the next meeting? I have a 1" sand bed in my softie tank I need some more diversity though=)

[Jacob D]

I took out all my SPS mini colonies and put them into the nano last night. All except my millie and prostrata that is. It was tough to break them off the rocks both physically and mentally but I decided I didn't want to interceptor my whole tank.

They will get interceptored starting this weekend in the nano and for the next few weeks until bugs are gone. I plan to put them back into the 75 in 6 weeks or so.

Between this and sandbed removal my tank is taking some punishment right now. I just about lost my larger pink Monti. cap colony to RTN, had to frag it down to a few small pieces. Algae is running rampant and 20g water changes are now mandatory while I remove the nasty sandbed. I can't wait to get back on the right track again!

This hobby has taught me a lot of patience.

[Jesus]

Jake, we missed you at the fragswap. It was kinda fun just hanging around with other reefer. Did not get pick this time for the tank is full anyway. Just donated the frags that I brought. Jay had a blast. He really scored on the trade he did with Pam. So how is your little project doing? Need help?

jesus

[GorillaReefer]

Yeah, it turned out pretty good for me. I also won 3 big colony's and some frags. So hows the tank doing?

[Jacob D]

Tank is doing just ok. Lots of sand to go still....

Glad you guys had a good time, I was staining my canopy, that project is almost done finally!

[Bamm Bamm]

You should pull it all at once that would be less stress on everything..

[Bamm Bamm]

hey did you get that sump going yet? ZHere's a pic of it on my 55g I had setup when I lived in Chico..

http://www.cvreefers.org/v/CVR_members/BammBamm/Image079.JPG.html

[Jacob D]

From what I have seen so far, to pull it all at once I would need to change my entire tank volume several times over. I'm doing this by vacuuming it out with a 1/2" siphon tube, which is working well and doesn't really stir it up much at all. I just get a little bit of gunk stirred up at the edge where the sand starts sliding down to fill in where it is low. I think this will be OK, the corals don't seem stressed other than the one I lost.

The sump is all ready to go, the only thing preventing me from putting it in is the amount of work I need to do to re-finish and seal the inside of my stand. That is going to take a full weekend and right now I'm trying to get my canopy wrapped up (in process of staining it).

[Jacob D]

Cool pic by the way, I hope mine will look like that soon! I did clean it up pretty good too, I routered all the saw cut edges, hold sawed the dremmelled holes, and scraped all the glue off the bottom, then added 3 baffles. It don't look half bad!

[Bamm Bamm]

Right on that should work out nice for ya.. Yeah the siphon method works good I thought you were pulling it out with cups or something for some reason

[Sheldon337]

error

[Jacob D]

Well, I might as well update then!

I'm about 50% done removing it I'd say. Tank is still not looking too great with the increased algae growth, and the corals are looking just slightly bleached, but overall I think all the water changes are helping. I'll probably do 10g this weekend along with more sand removal.


error error error..... :)

[Jacob D]

Well it's been a while since I have updated this and a lot has happened.

To recap, I decided to remove my sandbed because of a coulpe of clams that were sitting on the sand started stirring it up by opening and closing, this resulted in some nutrient problems (in my opinion) and I wanted the sand out.... 7 months later and here I am with only a fraction of the sand I used to have.


Recently (a couple of months ago) I did the 'last' removal which was quite a bit. Despite being very careful about sand stirring it seemed to really cause some problems in my tank (I did this all by siphon hose).

1. I lost several corals, I believe to bacterial infection.
2. I lost 2 fish that had been in the tank for a year
3. I had a terrible cyano bacteria outbreak
4. I have a pretty bad hair algae outbreak
5. I have noticed corals partially bleached for a while now.

What have I learned from all of this?

1. Although removing the sand in small installments lead to several small algae outbreaks, I never lost a fish or coral, had any cyano, or bleaching during that time. Once I did a large removal I had major problems. I probably should have done more like a 50% water change after the large removal as I had been doing 20% water changes during the small removals.

2. I reminded myself just how much nasty stuff there really is in a sandbed, as anyone who has ever removed one knows, going forward I will never use more than 1/2" of sand. One day I MIGHT try a DSB of 6" or more but I don't know about that right now, I just don't believe they can function indefinitely.


Moral of the story - think twice before you add or remove sand from your system, I'm basically back to square 1 after the tank running for 2 years.

[Bamm Bamm]

I agree... .5-1" for me from now on as well. no more 6" ones

[Jacob D]

Well look who crawled out from under a rock ;)
Whats up man!?!

[Bamm Bamm]

nothing much work work work.. Getting married on the 13th so I'm off after friday trying to get everything finished up I'll be off for three weeks a long overdue and deserved vacation for me.=)
Bought a few dirtbikes so I'm been riding like every weekend lately.. The damned Koi pond still doesn't have water in it... Issues with the spray in $10k liner... So umm we're a bit ****ed and it's getting fixed though.... I miss my fish tanks= It's hard for me to get to sleep with actual silence in my room at night I miss having a frag store in there=)

[Jacob D]

Just set up a nano cube or something, you know you want to...

Congrats on married life. It's pretty good I suppose ;)

[Bdimas]

Im not a big fan of DSB's because of all the crap that builds up in them. Also I think they look ugly.
Hopefully now your tank will start to get better.