Detritus

[Brisk]

I'm being over run by detritus, I have many crabs (12+) and a few types of snails (about 20) in my 90 gal DT. Other then my phosphates are a bit high all my parameters are good and I've kept my salinity lower at 1.021-1.023 depending on evaporation. I have a pretty large sand sifting goby, a yellow tang, and a couple conch in the mix as well. eBay led light boxes at 30% whites 8 hours per day and 60% blues 12 hours overlapping.

All my rock, sand, etc is a combination of select pieces from 3 established tanks that were shut down in January.

I have to clean the glass daily and my rocks and sand, shells etc is covered. I can hardly see the coraline algea which the rocks were covered in, it's under the detritus. What can I do to help control or slow down detritus growth... or is it still in a cycling process?

 

[CStrickland]

Detritus is like poop from the crabs, snails, and bacteria; and dead bacteria; and leftover food and stuff. It doesn't really "grow," it just settles in low flow areas. You might have something diff going on like diatoms, bacteria, or algae.
Can you post a pic of your tank?

 

[heathlindner25]

Sometimes more tank maintenance is required then other times, use a turkey baster and blow the Rocks off and do lots of water changes while vacuuming the sand.hth
There will also come a time when very little maintenance is needed.

 

[Brisk]

right diatoms, I used the wrong term lol

 

[CStrickland]

right diatoms, I used the wrong term lol

Are you using rodi filtered water with zero tds?

 

[UTCReefer]

In a young tank <5yrs, it could just be an imbalance. After that your sandbed/rocks may be saturated with phosphates. If you have phosphates that are uncontrollable so that even with phosphate media they wont come down and stay down then you may have to take other actions.
Personally I ended up removing my sandbed and started blowing off my rocks with a MJ powerhead and then removing the detritus doing a 10gal water change weekly like clock work.
I miss my sandbed but like the increased flow that i can now have without blowing sand all over. Its crazy to see just how much detritus is generated weekly just by blowing the rocks off.

 

[Brisk]

yes rodi 0ppm water and instant ocean salt, I'll try get a picture today