Dilemma - replace sand in newish tank? (1 Viewer)

[Reefahholic]

She can fix it but fine sand will continue to be a headache. I’m glad she ordered some good quality larger grain. Now she can crank the flow up and never worry about it. Plus sugar fine creates some funky dead zones if the proper animals aren’t in the bed.

 

[Reefahholic]

Let us know when the new sand arrives. What did you end up getting? How big is the tank..

 

[smootie]

Let us know when the new sand arrives. What did you end up getting? How big is the tank..

My sand arrived yesterday -- I got the mesoflakes!

People had some really great suggestions so I'm still debating what to do.

 

[Reefahholic]

My sand arrived yesterday -- I got the mesoflakes!

People had some really great suggestions so I'm still debating what to do.

The Mesoflakes are awesome. I’d say in the last 10 years that has been the most popular sand out of any other sand I’ve seen on the market especially with more experienced reefers. Not as big as ReefFlakes but still handles the flow pretty well, yeah small enough to accommodate fish like sand sifting goby’s, Wrasse’s, and other sand critters.

How much SPS do you have in the tank again?

With my last system I had live rock but I literally sucked all the sand out in one day and nothing even died I couldn’t believe it. I typically don’t do anything crazy like that but I had a yellow eye coal tang that was spitting sand on top of all my corals. I got fed up and just sucked it all out.

The best way to do it is to suck it out during every water change that you do until it’s gone. But honestly if you don’t have a lot of Acropora or other SPS I wouldn’t worry too much about it at all.

 

[Reefahholic]

This is what Meso looks like and here’s a testimonial that pretty much echo’s what I said.

“Ive used miniflakes, reefflakes and now mesoflakes. I like the meso, as its big enough to not blow around with the flow cranked up, but still thin enough to let my wrasses dive into it. Anyhow, I found that the miniflakes blew around quite a bit, I dont have those issues with the mesoflakes so far - and I have the WAVs set at 60% on Mavericks. Here's some pictures of the grain size compared with the derasa that I have in there (about 2.5" across). I used 60lbs in my 525xL.”

 

[Erin]

My sand arrived yesterday -- I got the mesoflakes!

People had some really great suggestions so I'm still debating what to do.

What did you end up doing? Did it solve the "fine sand" problem?

 

[oguzman]

Funny I'm barebottom nowadays and I really miss the look of the sand in my system I also miss the critters that you can get with the sand too!

 

[Cody]

Funny I'm barebottom nowadays and I really miss the look of the sand in my system I also miss the critters that you can get with the sand too!

Nah don't regret the sand. I've recently found that my live rock is a disruption to flow so I've taken all of it out and I couldn't be happier! Also, by taking all the water out of my tank I've found that it's much easier to manage nutrients. Very stable now.

 

[Reefahholic]

Nah don't regret the sand. I've recently found that my live rock is a disruption to flow so I've taken all of it out and I couldn't be happier! Also, by taking all the water out of my tank I've found that it's much easier to manage nutrients. Very stable now.

You should take the lights off too. That way it doesn’t shock the corals.

 

[smootie]

What did you end up doing? Did it solve the "fine sand" problem?

This past weekend I tried vacuuming the powdery stuff out of a small area of the sand when I was going a water change. It went okay -- it gets some of the dust out but if I stir the spot more comes out.

Sadly, the problem is less urgent now because my sand-sifting goby died last Friday. I examined his body and didn't find any trauma. Water parameters were normal except my nitrates are a little high (6ppm, I feed heavily for the macros) and pH was low at 7.9 but that swings between night/day. He was a little skinny so I'd been target feeding him mysis a couple times a day to help fatten him up. Maybe his death was related to that?

 

[Cody]

You should take the lights off too. That way it doesn’t shock the corals.

And very little algae growth as well!

 

[Reefahholic]

This past weekend I tried vacuuming the powdery stuff out of a small area of the sand when I was going a water change. It went okay -- it gets some of the dust out but if I stir the spot more comes out.

Sadly, the problem is less urgent now because my sand-sifting goby died last Friday. I examined his body and didn't find any trauma. Water parameters were normal except my nitrates are a little high (6ppm, I feed heavily for the macros) and pH was low at 7.9 but that swings between night/day. He was a little skinny so I'd been target feeding him mysis a couple times a day to help fatten him up. Maybe his death was related to that?

If you don’t have much SPS in there I’d just suck it out during 3 big water changes. Add the new sand in with some Dr. Tim’s or MB7 and call it done.