water changes with sand

[Alvarez]

with saltwater and a live sand substrate i DO NOT use my python to vacuum the bottom correct? or am i supposed to like i do on my freshwater gravel?

i would expect not as i wouldn't want to vacuum up the live organisms however I have to ask to make sure i don't do anything wrong getting this tank started.

 

[melosu58]

I do not vacuum my sand. I let the clean up crew and two sand sifting gobies do the job.

 

[lando]

I do not vac my sand either. Clean-up crew all the way.

 

[Alvarez]

Ok thats what I figured... I was about to do a water change... My crabs are doing great and moving along everywhere in the tank... It has been what 3 weeks now and I have added fully cured LR and there was no spike, the crabs have been in there just fine now for a week and the levels are still good.. Prolly another week and I should be safe to add my 1st fish?

 

[lando]

The fully cured LR most likely sped up your cycle. If you experienced no H3 spike t all I would drop in a couple pinches of flake food and see if anything changes. If all is okay, one fish in a week or so would be fine.

 

[Alvarez]

I had dropped a couple frozen shrimp in there and My levels are all ok right now..

However, I have noticed small little bugs I guess you would say walking on the glass. Also there is one small patch of almost microscopic spider like bugs on the glass also.

Is this bad or normal? Would it have come from the frozen shrimp?

 

[seaham358]

come from the LR, pods of some kind... A good thing Do the spider like bugs move? How about a pic...

 

[finest]

a spider like bug, that's a good sign.

 

[Alvarez]

They are moving a whole bunch. There are white microscoping bugs that are moving on the glass and a patch of microscopic spiders... I just read a thing about saltwater tanks and it said that you may be lucky enough to get shrimp, bugs, spiders, and maybe even a star fish hitch a ride in on youir live rock. After reading that I figured this must be a good thing. I see bigger bugs that come out of the rock from time to time some look like white colored shrimp.

 

[roka64]

The white colored shrimp are copods....good stuff there! Sucking up the sand sucks them up....