detritus problem

I bought a 20gal long from someone on craigslist that was fully setup with all the goodies like lights, live rock, sand, and powerheads. the problem I am having is that during the move the sand bed was disturbed and now i have detritus everywhere. I added some more astrea and cerith snails and a few hermit crabs to try to help because the clean up crew was lacking.

What would be the best way to attack this? I am going to do a 40% water change today to help with it and another one in a few days. Is there anything else i can do?

 

The water change should help a lot, particularly if you vacuum the sandbed a bit as you remove the old water. Also, what filtration are you running on the tank? A mechanical filter (such as anything with a sponge or filter floss) will help.

 

you can always vacuum up the detrius if you consider there to be way too much of it. your cuc will eventual work through it tho. also with the substrate stirred up you may have a nitrate spike. test it and see what it is. a large water change may be needed also.

 

I do have a HOB marine land filter running a carbon that i have changed every day over the past few days.

i did have a nitrate spike it is about 15 ppm at the moment. Do you think that i should do a larger water change?

 

You said you were going to do a 40% change - I'd stick with that for now, and continue monitoring. Regarding your HOB marineland filter, does it only have the carbon in it, or does it have any mechanical filtration too? If it doesn't, I'd add some filter floss to help filter out any particles. But between your water change and CUC and filter, it should take care of the problem IMO.

 

It does have mechanical filter media as well. thanks for the quick replys