Oolite sugar sand looks terrible, clean up crew help??

[Donut528]

Hey all,
I'm having difficulty keeping my sandbed looking nice. I used oolite sugar grain sand (20 pounds) and I'm having a hard time finding ways to clean it in my jbj 45.

I can't vacuum it, it's so fine that it will literally get sucked out of my aquarium when I try that. It's not fun having to dump cups of sand back into my tank lol. It cakes together and becomes hard on the bottom of my aquarium too, and it forms this gross looking "œskin" of algae and detritus if I just try to leave it alone and let the tank work things out on its own. My flow comes from an mp10 running 100% on reefcrest.

I do not have a clean up crew. I scrub the rocks off myself. I don't trust shrimp, crabs, etc not to bully my corals for their reef roids food (I spot feed a lot). Is there an invert that specializes in cleaning sandbeds only that will leave my corals in peace? My first thought is snails, but everyone says those are kinda useless and just die after a few months??

 

[top shelf]

If it we're me I would either remove portions of it at a time and replace with something like special grade or add a decent layer of special grade over the top of it. That stuff is a pain and most people regret adding it for the reasons you mentioned.

 

[ramseynb]

Nassarius and cerith snails. Also, you could also slowly vacuum a bit out each water change and replace it with something coarser. I've used super fine sand before and had the same problems you're describing. I use (and have used) Fiji Pink and I like it a lot. It looks nice and is pretty easy to keep clean.

 

[Donut528]

Yeah in hindsight, I deeply regret adding this sand to my reef. I bought it on sale for 10$ for a 20lb bag because this was my very first reef tank. I didn’t know any better at the time and thought “sand was sand” lol.

 

[ramseynb]

Well, it's an easy problem to fix. Slowly siphon it out with each water change and replace it with something else. I've had much bigger regrets in this hobby.

 

[mcgyvr]

Be careful about overfeeding...
Photosynthetic corals need little if any supplemental food and all you may be doing is increasing your problem (added nutrient levels just fueling algae,etc...)

Snails are totally fine.. nassarius will dig into the sand bed,etc... but diversity in snails is great.. Get a handful of each type. They typically don't just die in a few months.. I've got snails that I've had in the tank for years..and I've seen them get as big as a fist before..