Do you vacuum your SB

[Josh125]

Just curious, I'm running a SSB and am thinking about starting to vacuum it.

 

[joeychitwood]

I vacuum it every time I do a water change. I also occasionally stir it while running mechanical filtration to remove detritus.

 

[ACBlinky]

I don't touch the SSB in my 21g, but between the pistol shrimp, cerith and nassarius snails it gets moved around a lot and doesn't collect much detritus.

 

[Josh125]

Thanks, I think I'm going to start. I been battleling algae for some time now and not sure where the fuel source for it is coming from.

Anyway, thanks

 

[hopper]

Instead of vacuuming the sand, you might just want to stir the top layer of sand around and get the detritus and junk stirred around enough to get it back in the water stream. Once there it will eventually get filtered out.

I see you are in the oil and gas industry. What part of it?

 

[Josh125]

Downstream, started in a refinery now work a desk in finished lubricants.

 

[gman19]

I don't touch the sand bed either...the Randall's goby, pistol shrimp, snails and sand sifting stars it stays pretty well stirred up. I will occasionally stir up the edge with the magnet cleaner when cleaning the glass...as mentioned above, the mess that ends up in the water column eventually gets filtered out.

 

[Fountainhead]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8064699#post8064699 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by hopper
Instead of vacuuming the sand, you might just want to stir the top layer of sand around and get the detritus and junk stirred around enough to get it back in the water stream. Once there it will eventually get filtered out.

That's what I do. I just use a turkey baster and blow the top of the sand around, usually in conjunction with a water change. I've never been sure if such a thing is actually a good idea, but most of my life has involved doing things that probably weren't good ideas, so what the heck.

 

[Ritten]

I vacuum my sand bed once a week along with my water change.