Sand Bed Maintenance

[Patroklos]

So...

I have a three month old 65g tank with a 2 1/2 inch sand bed. Lately I have notices that my snales have been knocking off bits and pieces from my live rock. Nothing crazy, just some dirt/shells/whatnot that I suppose have finally been dead long enough to no longer stick to the rock. This is starting to clutter the surface of my sand bed.

On top of that, I am starting to notice areas of discoloration in the sand below the surface (looking through the side of the tank). I have ten Nassarius snales that are active as **** and I thought these were supposed to sift the sand bed for this sort of algae growth. I have three fighting conchs as well that play in the sand.

So, what should I be doing that I am not? I hear some people talk of vacuuming the substrate, but I don't have one of those! I don't want to add anything else but snails. I am still waiting for some rock to arive (2 1/2 months now, DO NOT ORDER FROM MARCO ROCKS!!!) and would hate to kill something.

 

[melosu58]

I know I dont touch my sand bed but I dont have DSB either.

 

[Patroklos]

Most of the growth is in the first 1/2". How deep is considered a DSB?

 

[roka64]

About 4 or 5 to 6 inches.

 

[Patroklos]

Yeah, not that deep, 2 1/2" at most. So what should I be doing? Add more snails?

 

[pat8you]

Nassarius snails eat detritus and left of food not algae. They keep the sand bed stirred up nicely but won't eat the algae growing on it.

 

[Copepod]

I am no expert but have 3-4 inch DSB and have a Maxi-jet 1200 pointed down towards the far corner to get air activity around the bottom...it's a 35 hex and deep and started to get purple algae in one corner...seemed to work for that.

 

[roka64]

Add some more nassis to overturn the sand....maybe even add another ph to get some more flow.
How much/often/what are you feeding?
What is your water source?

 

[Patroklos]

What inverts/fish eat algea out of the sand bed?

 

[Copepod]

I don't know...picked up the tip on the web on article about algae that water motion helps when you have "dead" spots in the tank. It feeds on food waste, etc. so if there isn't any there it basically starves. There are only a couple of spots left and they are deeper down. It is amazing to watch a DSB do it's thing. ...at least so far so good..

 

[Patroklos]

Add some more nassis to overturn the sand....maybe even add another ph to get some more flow.
How much/often/what are you feeding?
What is your water source?

I feed minimal flakes every day, and frozen carnivor food (marine cuizine) and seaweed via veggie clip every other day. The waver is RO/DI filtered.

I guess I will try the power head thing. I currently have two Koralia 3 power heads churning up the middle water column, I do have another Koralia Nano in the quarantine tank I could move to the main for light sand bed movement.

Well, before I start cannibalizing my quarantine equipment (or in other words buying a new powerhead) I guess I could manually churn the sand and see if that solves it.