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Oddomatic

Reef Enthusiast
Location
Long Island, NY
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Just looking for some opinions here. I know this topic has been beaten to death once over, and there are as many different beliefs as there are reefers out there regarding this. That being said, I'm running a 22 gallon nano with mostly live rock, mixed coral and a light fish bio load. My sand bed is a slightly coarser type of Aragonite, roughly between 2-3 inches deep (not quite yet considered a deep sand bed, but also not shallow.) Considering all the classic arguments of disturbing anaerobic/aerobic bacteria, the depths these bacteria occur at naturally yadda yadda yadda.... On a setup like my nano, would you siphon some of the sand during water changes or just leave it? Again just looking to see what you guys would do in my situation. Thanks.

BTW. I am leaning towards vacuuming the bed every other week, Mainly because of the small overall water volume in my set up. I'd hate to take the risk of a huge spike later down the line when the sand bed can't hold any more detritus. For a nano, a large spike or algae plume would probably be the end of the story... Not only that, but from what I've read regarding the whole bacterial colony argument, that really only Apply to beds deeper than 4" unless I am mistaken....
 

nyshoots

Advanced Reefer
Location
Mamaroneck, NY
Rating - 100%
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I started my 28 nano with 2 inches of super fine sugar grain sand and after about 7 months I started adding sps and bought an mp10 which blew the sand all over the place and caused a spike and a hair alage outbreak. Ive been vaccuming out a cup a week of the sand ever since and after a while my tank started looking a lot better. Im not sure if this applies to your situation or not but its working for me. Im not sure if im going to replace the sand once its all gone or just go bare bottom.
 

Will

Advanced Reefer
Location
Long Island
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Bacteria colonies can grow on anything as far as I know , including sand no matter how deep or shallow. I would just vacuum the sand bed at every water change. You would be removing alot of crap that gets trapped . I vacuum my shallow sand bed and I've never had an algae outbreak.
 
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