cleaning detrius?

The way I do it, it only suchs up light weight stuff, not strong enough to pick up sand. Luna

 

My water changes:
-Unplug return pump so all water with potential nastiness kicked up is not going into the sump, then take out all the sponge filters from the overflow box and sump and get the wife to rinse them down.
-Blast off nastiness from rock and sand and such and keep the powerheads on so it doesn't settle back down
-Siphon out 5 gallons into my glorious 5 gallon bucket and try to take as much nastiness out of the water as possible during the process
-Pour in the WCW
-replace sponges/filters, plug in return pump, and let the bio filter handle what I didn't get with the siphon.

Having a 55 makes 10% water changes easy to handle with a 5 gallon bucket, and having hermit crabs and snails roaming around make life much easier by cleaning up the place.

 

So is this stating that you let your bio-balls collect the gunk? Just curious because I made that mistake and have been fighting algae from the nitrate factory! Cleaning bio balls weekly a quarter at a time now

Luna good call on the turkey baster. I am in the middle of a w/s not and got alot of the sand with it. Just the stuff I couldnet pick up with the siphon. I have the python that you showed in the pic also btw. I am doing 10 gallons today just to do maintaince on the sump.

 

The way my sump is setup I have 3 sponges/filters for the water to pass through. It needs to pass through 2 of these to even reach the bioballs. The first one being in my overflow box, it collects the big stuff like poop and what-not before sending the water down into the sump. The next sponge is a large square 1 inch thick really fine thing. Only super small stuff would be able to get through it...my bioballs do not get any "detritus" on them thanks to those sponge filter things. Those filters, combined with my Live Rock and Bioballs, and snails, crabs, shrimp and other critters, and a BA protein skimmer (no not a brand), I rarely have any debris build up in my tank.

So what I'm saying is that no, my bioballs do not collect all the gunk. The things that do collect all the gunk are cleaned once a week. The bioballs handle ammonia to nitrate only, and water changes control the nitrate levels. If you have a problem with a "nitrate" factory, ease up on the feeding. Anything that isn't eaten by something will indeed fuel the nitrate factory.

 

I just use a 3/8" tube to siphon out my water. The flow is low enough to control sand being sucked out but strong enough to get the loose gunk when it's an inch away. I do what Luna says, I pinch the tube if I see that sand was sucked up. Sand sifting stars can also clean it up.

 

I use hermit crabs. It may just be my tank, but the hermits tend to hang out on my sand and clean it. I rarely see them on the rock and when i do, the sand is spotless.
I also have a lot of current. I use quite a bit of flow in my tank.

I never siphon my sand. Then again, my tank is only a 20g.

 

I turkey baste the rock with my filter and Hydor on. I wait 20 min for the water to clear and baste again. Ater 2-4 times there's really nothing let. Then i waterchange, and then change my filter pad, so all the debris leaves the tank. Also, since I bought Turbo snails, I hardly have any detritus on my rocks. My Nass snails, hermits, and Turbos clean my gravel. Good luck!

 

God knew what he was doing when he made the oceans, so the snails and hermits are the best things I've seen to clean off waste. You can never go wrong with a hermit crab. Unless it kills a snail to steal it's shell...then you're down one snail...but other than that all is well.

 

Ahh, I lost a hermit and a snail in the last few days! My Nass snails had a feeding frenzy on the hermit, and I watched the snail shell get snatched by my starfish.

 

Animal fights are so intense...but sad at the same time. Stupid Nass shells have to look so pretty to hermits and other critters, they should just stay in the sand like they're supposed to.