How do you keep your live sand so white???

[Mark Spencer]

As a photographer I can answer the white sand question. Film, CCD or CMOS sensors can only "see" a limited range of brightness--roughly 10 stops and far less than the human eye. So when you expose for the rockwork or your favorite fish, the sand, which is more than 4 stops brighter than the f stop on your camera, shows up as white without detail. It is the photographic equivalent of clipping or saturation. If we want to see detail in the sand we would have to underexpose, i.e. expose for the sand.

 

[Melbourne]

Hi,

I like the tiger tail cuke, they do clean the sand well. Not the prettiest thing to look at and they do leave sand pellets as mentioned before.

-Mike

 

[auto_loader]

Could someone post a picture of the "sand pellets" please.

 

[Pez Vela]

TwentyFivePSI: You can always turn off the "Email Notification" box when replying the first time and then you will not be annoyed when others post. That is what I do. If you check the board once a day or so, you can catch up to speed real easy without filling up your mailbox....

mike

 

[TwentyFivePSI]

If I did that I would never find the thread again. They cycle so fast on this board, it is so busy.

 

[Saltz Creep]

As a photographer I can answer the white sand question. Film, CCD or CMOS sensors can only "see" a limited range of brightness--roughly 10 stops and far less than the human eye. So when you expose for the rockwork or your favorite fish, the sand, which is more than 4 stops brighter than the f stop on your camera, shows up as white without detail. It is the photographic equivalent of clipping or saturation. If we want to see detail in the sand we would have to underexpose, i.e. expose for the sand.

So, you're saying to keep our sand looking white that we should only view our tanks through photographs? :lol:

 

[Mark Spencer]

That would certainly work for me. Some parts of my sand bed are downright grundgy. Perhaps we should all take and post pictures of our sand beds and see the naked truth.

 

[invincible569]

Make sure you also have GOOD flow all around your tank. That will also help. I dont have any brown sand. If I dose Iron or Amino's, then I may get a little bit, but the conch's clean it right back up and its crisp white. It can be done.

 

[Mark Spencer]

My dead spots occur in the middle of the front and in the rear corners. The two powerheads in back and the two sump returns on the ends ensure good circulation everywhere except in these places. Powerheads on the sides of the tank would be unsightly. There has been much debate in other threads about OceanMotion and SCWD wavemakers and I am wondering if there is any consensus from those reporting really white sand which devices work best for them.
Mark

 

[PinkFloydReefer]

Everyoen says the sand sifters die real quick. But mine have been going strong for over a year and I dont do anything special.

 

[Someone]

photoshop? i dunno,. I have crushed coral and its got a bunch of green/brown algae growing on it, and only a little coraline.

 

[npaden]

I think one thing that people are missing is the grain size of the sand. Some of the live "sand" I've received in the past was actually not really sand at all but more along the lines of rubble.

Coraline and other things will grow on the larger rubble pretty easily. If you have sand it should be easy to keep clean and white.

My sand stays pretty clean with a sand sifting cuke, a bunch of nassarius and a couple conchs.

Here is a pic of my 3 1/2 year old sandbed and my cuke (there are even some of the infamous sand "pellets" at the business end of it!):

FWIW, Nathan

 

[Saltz Creep]

I floss each grain of sand after every meal.

 

[Mark Spencer]

I have to confess that, thanks to the responses on this thread, I had to rethink my theory that all sand beds look white in a photograph because of the limited dynamic range of film or CCD/CMOS sensors. Responses about water flow caused me to take a second look at the flow in my tank and I realized that my dirty sand lay in areas of low flow. I added a Seio pump to my two Maxi-Jets and half my half of my dirty sand bed turned white. I still have dead spots in both back corners that are difficult to bathe with flow but I have a stronger appreciation for the necessity of LOTS of water movement.

 

[jayo]

I've used conchs and nassarius and tiger tail cucumbers and my sand was still dirty.

I think it is still useful if people repeat answers - if one person yells out "Conchs!" you think, hmm, an expert or a crackpot? who knows?

But if you get 30 responses and 25 yell "conchs!" then you can think, gee, lots of people seem to have great results from these. I think it improves confidence in a course of action.

jayo

 

[km133688]

Maybe the problem with 2 word responses is that its just too long for showing that you agree. I think we could do with a shortcut abbreviation that is 2 letters long to show we agree. Kind of like this...

 

[km133688]

IA

 

[km133688]

M2

 

[Fastmarc]

Re: How do you keep your live sand so white???

... what is the secret to a pure white sand bed?

The critters in my sand keeps it clean. Since I took it straight from the sea, it has a large population of various critters. Among them are numerous worms that ingests the sand at one end and leave clean white looking sand out the other. They are thin, but usually long and the live under the sand, never surfacing. They leave little mounds of clean sand all over the place. I only see them when they come next to the glass.

 

[AuContraire]

Do sea hares (aplysia) clean sand, or just rock? I've been thinking of getting one.