Water Changes

When you do water changes, do you siphon the sand bed each time? Also, do you move your live rock and siphon underneath? As I've added more live rock and some corals, it's become tougher to move things around. Thanks.......

 

Absolutely not. If I were to disturb my sand bed a cycle would ensue for shore..... I have a CUC for keeping the sand clean. Learned the hard way on this one....

 

Like PhramrJohn said leave the sand alone. The one thing I try to do during water change is to get the top layer of water, compared to water from the middle of the tank. The reason for this is the worst water naturally goes to the top of the tank, which is partially why overflows are great for capturing the water that needs filtered the most.

 

I agree with Pharmerjohn and rkemp...I do a 15% water change once a week....I have a 24g with a 10g fuge so I do water changes more frequently being that it is little water volume!

 

i always thought it was best to siphon the sand on one part of the tank at a time, say one corner, and then work your way around the tank gradually on different water changes.

perhaps i`m totally wrong, i just remember reading that somewhere.

 

What you can do is to stir the sand and with a turkey baster you can blast the rock. This will suspend a lot of detritus in the water. They do a water change and siphon all thay newly stired up crap out of the water

J

 

I totally don't recommend stirring up your substrate or rock work. If you do water changes, and have an over-flow sucking your surface into a filter/ sump, then I would suck the water from the sump in an attempt to not disturb my DT.

Question though, "Kdub"?

 

I blast my rock all the time. help to keep dead spots in the tank from building up detritus and what not. I use nassarious snails and star fish for the sand bed

J

 

I disagree. If you have stratification of water quality in your tank, then you have insufficient water movement. Ideally, your water should be completely homogenous from tank to sump.

Also, I think PharmrJohn and Jason both have valid points--the point of contention is accumulated junk and past habits. If you have an established sand bed, say a year or more old, and it's deeper than a few inches, then you are bound to have zones in your sand bed that contain sulphur compounds--and disturbing those oxygen-depleted layers would probably kick in a cycle, not to mention liberate compounds into the water column that have no business being there.

I think Jason is also correct, but his method carries with it the assumption you have been doing this since day one. If you're not cultivating a deep sand bed, or knockoff thereof (attempting to change nitrates to nitrogen gas via oxygen starved layers in the sand), then it would be beneficial to keep the sandbed stirred. The caveat here is that the practice be employed from day one.

IMO, the ideal scenario (if not instituting a DSB) would be to stir the sand bed periodically, i.e. at each water change, and allow the detritus to enter the sump where it can be mechanically filtered out and discarded. If not done manually, a decent CUC can do this for you.

As many have said--there's more than one way to achieve a healthy reef tank.

 

I've been siphoning the sand on one half of my tank each water change. Just lightly, not real deep into the sand bed. So most of you don't even siphon the sand at all?

Optimist.....Dub = W. My initials are KW.