What just happened?

There is a theoretical argument against vacuuming, although, at the same time, many such as myself have vacuumed our sandbeds. Personally, I have gently vacuumed sand beds for about a decade and have not noticed any decrease in infauna or other apparent ill effects.

I haven't seen a tank that accurately simulates a reef environment. Also, I haven't seen many reefs with nice clean sand like we keep in our tanks. More coral rubble around the reef, maybe some sand a bit away from the base of the reef structure though. Anyways, due to the stronger water moment and sand sifting organisms around the reef, the sand probably gets a heck of a lot more stirred up than in a lot our tanks. If you've ever kept a sleeper goby or pistol shrimp, you probably know what I mean. Light vacuuming does nothing in comparison to these creatures as far as disturbing the sand goes....

 

Corals reefs also don't really have "sand" around them either

 

Packleader vacuums often, which as pointed out above by a number of people, is perfectly acceptable in a reef tank
if nothing is allowed to build up in there, there is no risk of releasing anything

the risks Brownie and others mentioned are probably more likely to result in a situation where a deepish sand bed has been ignored for a couple of years or so, and then gets major disturbance

glad the issue is resolving for you Jason
thankfully I have never experienced anything like that

Steve

 

Holy crap, I hope I never walk into something like that.