Lots of Bubbles Rising

+1 Sounds good to me! I just have a hard time understanding the don't vacuum part. How am I suppose to get this brown filmy stuff and other undesirables from my sand bed if I am not to vacuum? The article: Ron Shimek's Website...Deep Sand Beds says not to siphon the sand bed and just let the sand bed basically "sift" and maintain itself. I just have a hard time seeing and believing this.. My tank is about 8-9months old and I've always siphoned the top dirty stuff off of my sand bed

 

The sand bed stratifies itself based on oxygen content. The deeper you go, the less oxygen is present and that allows for the nitrate consuming bacteria to thrive. By messing with the sand, oxygen is able to get farther down into the sand. When oxygen comes into contact with these nitrate consuming bacteria, the oxygen molecule will literally rip the electrons right from the bacteria... Killing them instantly.

Now back to the bubbles: they are not from this above stated reaction. They are strictly from that brown film that is covering your sand. The film itself is dinoflagellates. They are microscopic organisms that make thick mats and biofilms. The dinos are consuming some type of nutrient present in your tank and will not be eradicated until they either use all the nutrient or else are killed off by good husbandry.
I asked what your pH is because generally dinoflagellates thrive at lower pH (7.6-7.8) and at higher pH (8.1-8.3) they have trouble maintaining a steady internal pH and they die off. Most people are successful in eradicating the dinos by dosing kalk daily for 1-3 months to maintain high pH in the aquarium. This usually kills and starves out the dinos forever. End of bubbles and brown mat over everything.

 

+1 Dingo! Thanks a lot for all that information.

I have a few things to do but after I get home around 430pm EST I will do a water test (Usually takes about an hour to come with all of my results) My pH is usually stable around 8.2. I thought the brown film could be the dinoflagellates we are talking about and you confirmed by suspicions so thank you.

The bubbles seem to be gone now but yes I've been battling the dino film for a while now. I just started dosing with Kalk because only one store in 50 sq mi. sells it.

So with the mud looking stuff(i think may be fish poop) and the dinoflagellates I will just leave these to their own accord next time I do my WC and just hope it filters out itself.

I have noticed tiny formations of pinkish air bubbles I believe to be cyano forming, this is one reason I am debating on slowly removing my sand bed and going BB.

There could be a few things that are causing this, I sort of "blindly" dose a few times a week. A cap of Coral-Vite once a week, 2 caps of Iodide a week, and usually every 2 or 3 days I will dose with Kent's Nano Part A & B. I think I'm over doing something and have recently completely stopped dosing with the Iodide. Only reason I dose is because I noticed my coralline dying off a while back, and since I've dosed I have also noticed my corals are fuller more colorful and I have coralline growing on my rocks, rocks, powerheads and back like crazy. Even in my fuge they are growing up the cheapo 5500k lighting.

 

it really works, if you noticed the levels of the sand bed the most important one to me was the seed layer, the garf grunge in his tank. if you use sand that is fully seeded sand or material with the creatures in it, it will get there faster for sure, i haven't vaccum my 220 since i put in in and the life in the sand bed and rocks are amazing

 

Makes me a little nervous leaving that brown dinoflagellates on the sand bed like that but I'm going to go for it and see where it takes me!!

It's just funny because I'm already trying to let all the Green Dust Film Algae on my tank's glass "cycle" and die off without scraping it. So I haven't scraped my glass in a few weeks and it looks pretty terrible. I do not have any major algae growth anywhere else besides the glass and the dinoflagellates on the sand. I have one area that's a little spotty with GHA(was really bad when I first started) and a few small area's with red bubble algae (which I think is neat to look at and I siphon it away every 2 weeks or so, it hasnt been much of a problem yet as far as being invasive so I keep it around unlike green bubble algae)

pH and parameters will be posted around 430pm EST

 

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what i would do with the brown is use a turkey blaster and suck it up without messing with the sand and order some of garfs grunge its really good stuff and heck look at sallyjoes frags while your there for a christmas present ;D

 

I personally am an advocate of BB. But the pink circles are not cyano if they are under the sand. This pink air bubble is a small pocket formed around organic matter and the bacteria breaking it down just happen to be pink. Nothing to worry about.

 

thanks again dingo, i have seen a few threads where people are assuming this is cyano and vacuum deep down to get it out. since you've given me your suggestions i have left my sandbed alone and have noticed little amphipods cleaning and fighting over fight poop and other gunk on the sand bed at night lol

the only real problem i am dealing with now is weekly prunings of red bubble algae (not to bad so far) and a new growth of red scruffy turf algae type stuff that grows like a spider-leg looking moss. i think it came in on a trochus snail that i recently added(which btw are very very cool snails)