stirring ls...

[Oceanicsublimat]

I am getting a little cyano and am looking for a conch, but the lfs says that their supplier has none right now.. My question is should I be stirring my sand when I do my weekly water change? I have alot of hitchhiker worms and whatever else is burrowing under the sand.. I've seen some snails that appear to be eating the mysis shrimp that I put out so I assum this is a nassarius and also I am noticing something mounding up the sand with spiraling sand coming from the center of this mound.. I don't want to kill anything living in the sand by stirring it up do I?

 

[Oceanicsublimat]

my sand bed is not too deep.. I only have 60lbs in a 55gal.. so it's like 2 inches maybe 3 in some spots.. and the way my rock is it would be difficult to stir it up good..

 

[GoodFish]

get a couple turbo's... thats what i did and they stirr up the sand bed for yah....Im watching mind do it right now....its a fine job they do...

 

[Oceanicsublimat]

kool deal man.. thanks.. my lfs is getting some in tomorrow.. still gonna get the conch though.. this cyano is looking nasssty.

 

[GoodFish]

okay..... some blue legg hermits will also take care of the cyano problem...
Also, good luck with the cyano...i herd it can be pretty nasty

 

[badfish]

yeah, your gonna need a good clean up crew, try nassarius snails, they tend to stay in the sand, and are dirt cheap. Are you sure its cyano, and not diatoms, the only reason i ask is because i think you started your tank not too long after me. How long has your tank been up?

 

[GoodFish]

yeah I mixed them up at first too...but my so called cyano was diatoms...but either or, nothing a good clean up crew cant fix.

 

[Oceanicsublimat]

well.. diatoms is brown..got that... and this is red...got that too.. I think what triggered it was a dead tunicate..I'm not feeding anything but my scooter blenny 2 times a day mysis shrimp.. I have purigen, phos x, and carbon in my sump tryin to fix it.. I'm using tap water so that is prolly the culprit, or at least a big part..

 

[seaham358]

Stirring sand IMO is a bad idea.
turbos wont eat cyno neither will hermits. I have had cyno on and off for a while and I tried several kinds of snails and hermits and none of them touched it on the sand bed. You need to figure out where its coming from, what type of wter are you using? Astrea snails would eat(very slow) the green cyno on the glass but not the sand.
Did you test for phosphates and silicates and nitrates? What are the readings.
I would suck it off the bottom when I did a water change and then I upped my flow and added a phosban reactor and it went away.
Remember that the conch can get large.

 

[SeriousDude5]

A sandsifting gody will sift the top layer of sand.

 

[copi]

I have observed cerith snails and redleg hermits eating cyano.