Cleaning Sandbed

fernalfer

New member
I have a 120 gallon tank with a 2 inch and 2 1/2 in some areas of sand. Now my tank will be 1 year old next week and i have not cleaned the sand bed since starting my tank up. My sand bed is really starting to look dirty and get cluttered with detritus.

Now i hear pros and cons to cleaning the sand bed but my CUC just can't keep up. So my question is will it be ok to start cleaning it with a vacuum at water changes if i just do little sections at a time? Or will that cause issues.
 
I vacuum small sections... no more than 20%. This will get the junk out. The rest of the microfauna will mostly be OK, but that which is not will very quickly be repopulated. I like to wait a few weeks before moving on to the next section.

You will find that certain sections might have more gunk in them and you can focus your efforts there in the future.
 
You can shut the pumps off it you want, but I leave them on while I siphon to suspend everything and filter it out more. Leaving them off will allow it to settle faster, but my goal is to remove everything when I siphon.
 
A diamond goby is a miracle worker on sand beds, your sand will be free of all dirt and detritus with no effort needed.
 
my diamond goby lived for 4 years no problems, then I had to take down my tank so I gave him back to the fish store.
 
You may also want to count your cleanup crew. They only last 1-3 years and will slowly die off with out you noticing sometimes. May need to do a slight restocking.

skeeter
 
Well i siphoned my sand bed a couple days ago. I only did a little tiny section all the way to the bottom. Pulled a lot of detritus and gunk out of the sand. Noticed my sand was also pretty packed down so doing this really aerated the sandbed. No negative effects from doing so. Actually my corals were fuller then ever maybe because they went into feed mode with all the stuff suspended in the water.

Question how long should i wait to do another little section? Or is a couple days ok? I just heard it wasn't good to do it all at once.
 
do it once a week, right before a water change. that's what I do. I usually turn my pumps up to 100% power for a minute right before as well to blow stuff out of the rocks.
 
What are you guys using to vacuum your sand? I would like to do mine, but I use a DOS for auto water changes so I don't really want to pull out a bunch of water.
 
Last edited:
What are you guys using to vacuum your sand? I would like to do mine, but I use a DOS for auto water changes so I don't really want to pull out a bunch of water.

This is probably the most popular tool used.

https://www.chewy.com/python-pro-cl...gclid=CIyy8N-m_NICFcRhfgodF8AJ-Q&gclsrc=aw.ds

Instead of vacuuming your sand bed you could just use your finger, a stick or even a small powerhead and stir it up on occasion. Do this right before a water change and incorporate some sort of mechanical filter for a few hours to polish the water for you. Once things clear up go ahead and remove this. It's definitely easier on the micro fauna if you go this route. ;)
 
I normally just use my long aquarium tweezers and stir up the sand then immediately start my water change siphoning out the water in that area to suck out as much as possible. I normally change and clean my filter socks about an hour after as well.
 
Back
Top