Huge upset! What do I do?

[Lizzy_lray]

So last night all hell broke loose while I was asleep in bed. I woke to my power head falling and creating a sand storm in my tank!!

There are huge ruts in the sand bed my rocks where barley visible and no sign of fish. After correcting the power head I found my two spot hogfish then shortly after my royal gramma came out of hiding. My coals are upset but think they will pull through. My CUC is completely wiped out.

What do I need to do with this sand. There are huge ruts that almost reach the bottom on my 2" sand bed?

It's hard to tell but they go all the way to the bottom.

 

[gone fishin]

Personally I would just move/rake the sand back over the ruts.

Things will settle down. A 2 inch bed is not really a DSB IMO so your tank should be able to recover easily. Keep an eye on your numbers and do a WC if necessary. Good luck just my 2 cents.

 

[CHizer]

I agree. It'll recover with a little time.

 

[Lizzy_lray]

Okay that's good to hear I thought disrupting the sand bed on an established tank could crash it. Glad that isn't the case.

 

[Deftones2015]

If you have a length of pvc pipe you can use one end to even the sand out. I've even used the end of a long fish net. Other than that just wait and everything should be fine.

 

[Jeff4777]

Glad its not a deep sand bed!

 

[Newstead]

I would smooth out the sand as well, but if it had not been aiphoned or cleaned in a while I would do a large water change and run new carbon to handle what was stirred up.

 

[Aframomum]

And when your done smoothing out your sandbed replace the powerhead with some kind of magnetic held one.

Used to happen all the time when all we had were the suction cup ones.

 

[Bent]

I purposely do that to my sand bed at least once a week. Most of your critters will dig their way out from under it. Fix it back the way you want it and move on, don't sweat it at all.