- Location
- Hicksville, NY
As you can see from my sig I use the super-fine sugar sand in my reef. For a while earlier this year I was getting a build-up of what I thought was diatoms, but with a 6-stage RO/DI system being used for topoff and for making my change-water I doubt I'm introducing much in the way of silicates. Not really sure what it is - the closest I can come up with is perhaps dinoflagellates??? Anyway for a while all I did was stir the sand up right before my ~16% weeekly WC (10g - taking into account display tank AND sump volume) but it would come right back in a day or so.
This winter I started to vacuum the very top surface of sand right before a WC. I used a manual siphon and would pinch the hose manually so I could get VERY good control over how much sand would come out along with the gunk. Well, whattaya know, it seems that every time I do this, the sand stays cleaner longer and longer! In fact, I'm due for a WC tomorrow and the sand has almost NO brown gunk on it.
How does vacuuming the sand help? What I was thinking was, there was "x" number of cells of this stuff living in my tank, and every time I siphon it, it has to take hold anew on the sand, but since I'm removing almost all of it (at least what's visible to the naked eye, anyway) with each sand-siphoning I'm slowly "eradicating" it from my system...
OR I could be just talking out of my you know what and could be totally wrong.
Any ideas why siphoning sand between WC's seems to be increasingly extending the time my sand stays clean?
This winter I started to vacuum the very top surface of sand right before a WC. I used a manual siphon and would pinch the hose manually so I could get VERY good control over how much sand would come out along with the gunk. Well, whattaya know, it seems that every time I do this, the sand stays cleaner longer and longer! In fact, I'm due for a WC tomorrow and the sand has almost NO brown gunk on it.
How does vacuuming the sand help? What I was thinking was, there was "x" number of cells of this stuff living in my tank, and every time I siphon it, it has to take hold anew on the sand, but since I'm removing almost all of it (at least what's visible to the naked eye, anyway) with each sand-siphoning I'm slowly "eradicating" it from my system...
OR I could be just talking out of my you know what and could be totally wrong.
Any ideas why siphoning sand between WC's seems to be increasingly extending the time my sand stays clean?
Last edited:
