Might be a dumb question...

[ppavlik]

I was just curious as to how exactly I am supposed to do the water changes. Am I supposed to do like I used to on my FW tanks and use a syphon to stir up the sand bed and get the nasty stuff off of the rocks and bottom. Or am I supposed to just take it off the top. I have been just taking it off the top so far.

 

[loganj]

If you have fine sand for a substrate, just get the trash off the top. I don't even vacuum my sand at all...I just pull water out of the tank and replace it with new SW. It depends on what kind of tank you have as well. If it's a FO tank, you may not have a good population of sand sifters to keep the sand clean. If you have a CC substrate, vacuum it as you would a FW tank.

 

[fishfreek]

Also remember to premix your saltwater and have it up to tank tempature before adding back into the tank.

You can get a turkey baster to squirt detrius off the rocks but try to not disturb the sand bed unless you must. If you have something on top of the sand bed you can hold the syphon tube above the sand bed and it should take it off the surface or you can lightly fan above the sand bed but you dont want to stir up the sandbed in general.

 

[Hara]

I "skim" the surface of the sandbed with tubing that is about 1/2 inch in diameter. This gets the detritus off the sandbed without losing too much sand. Then I take the rest off the top.

 

[phases99]

Once in a while I use a turkey baster to get the detritus on the LR into suspension before I siphon. I never touch the sandbed.

 

[ppavlik]

Thanks for all of the info. This forum is a real gold mine of info for beginners like me.

 

[Edmonton Eskimo]

oh by the way there are no dumb questions