Cleaning Ugly Sand

[Leah]

Oscar,

I would not recommend stirring it, I would use a siphon and slowly start siphoning small areas at a time.
How old is your sand bed?
I have always used a siphon to clean my sand bed. You can control the flow once you have the sand trapped inside you just bend the hose and it spits the sand back out.

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by Leah

Oscar,

I would not recommend stirring it, I would use a siphon and slowly start siphoning small areas at a time.
How old is your sand bed?

I have not used a siphon since I had a fresh water tank in high school. At that time I used a siphon for cleaning mostly the surface although it certainly did clean to a certain depth.

The sandbed is 18 months old. I will have to post a couple of photos tonight.

[Oscar]

ok here are a couple of photos of the issue. My questions:

1. What is the cause? Over feeding, poor circulation?
2. How do I clean this up? I am sure it is providing some function but it sure is ugly.

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by Leah

Oscar,

I have always used a siphon to clean my sand bed. You can control the flow once you have the sand trapped inside you just bend the hose and it spits the sand back out.

Leah: You think a siphon would solve my sand problem? Are you using a simple Hagen type syphon?

yup, Leah is right. You are suficating your sand bed you will need to siphon your sand do it slowly to not have to much stuff flotting around your tank. You may want to do it a second time, but, before you do it the second time you will need to move the sand away from the walls of the tank. Using an algea scraper and scrape that bad black brown algea off the walls while you have a hose to siphon the bad stuff out of your tank. Then do a complete siphon of your sand again, do your water change and things should settle down from there.

Bill

[Oscar]

Thanks Bill and Leah. I will start that this weekend.

After I get the current situation cleaned up then is siphoning a regular maintenance program?

[Leah]

How deep is your sandbed? Yes I just use the hagen siphon's I think I got them from J&L.
Start slow, do not go overboard and time it with a water change

[Oscar]

Originally Posted by Leah

How deep is your sandbed?

Sandbed is about 2" deep. Yes, I will take it slow and make it part of my water change process from here on.

[Oscar]

I invested in a gravel siphon this week. Changed my carbon and GFO yesterday morning before siphoning.

My normal water change is 4G (13% of my water). The siphon drains water very quickly compared to how much sand is cleaned but this sure works. I filled one 4G tub yesterday and another 4G tub this morning but really did not clean much sand.

I checked for phosphates with my Elos test kit but still showing zero.

I noticed that last night my candy cane did not extend its polyps for the first time in months.

I would like to continue siphoning through the week but should I wait until the candy cane shows its polyps again as an indicator that the water has returned to normal?