sand bed clumping

[kennethstowell]

help, my sand bed is clumping, what causes that?

 

[kangol99]

Are you dripping Kal with vinegar? if so then the Vinegar might be the source.

 

[kennethstowell]

no, i use seachem products, my ca. is +500ppm alk is 9 dkh

 

[2poor2reef]

My understanding is that a sand bed can clump due to bacterial processes if there is inadequate infauna to move the sand grains around. How much life do you have in the bed? Worms and such specifically.

 

[liquid]

Here's a quick way to verify if it's bacterial clumping. Take a chunk of the sandbed that's clumping and drop it into some bleach for 30 minutes. If the clump completely falls apart then it's bacterial clumping. If that doesn't work, try boiling the clump in tap water for 30 minutes. If that doesn't do anything, then it's most likely a calcium/alkalinity imbalance and I would do a number of waterchanges to get them back into balance.

Shane
liquid on #reefs

 

[liquid]

I forgot to post this in my previous post: I've had the same thing going on in my tank and I quizzed Ron on it. If you'd like to see my sandbed clumps, head over to http://www.liquidreef.com/ and look in the Equipment section under the Calcium/Alkalinity Supplementation section. I've got a number of pics of mine there.

fwiw

Shane
liquid on #reefs

 

[SeaView]

Hi,

I had this problem in my tank awhile back and through some reseach found the problem to be associated with the size of the sand particles. If they are all uniformed in size they clump. I slowly added and three inches of south down and never had it clump again.

PS. the pieces that clumped are now covered with coraline algae, worms, etc and you would have a hard time distinguishing some clumps from the live rock

Steve