stirring up substrate

FUA

New member
I have crushed coral in my 10g tank. I stir up the substrate from time to time. what is your opinions about this. is it beneficial or is it harmful or just neutral. I figure that some of the filter feeding worms, sponges, and corals might benefit from the suspended detritus. please let me know your opinions or experiences with this,.
 
I stir up the very upper level of my live sand each night and get a lot of the waste and detritus suspended in the water column so that filter feeders can eat (like my cups and some of the feather worms) but also to let the skimmer do it thing and clean up the tank. I don't get deep, just very light scratching of the sands top level. Seems to work.
 
yeah that is the point I do gravel vac what I can reach but some of it is hard to reach with my live rock set up. so I just use a little wooden dowel to stir it up.
 
Crushed coral isn't a good DSB medium, the granules are too large. As a result if you just leave it alone it will become a detritus trap. I would just vacuum it everytime you did a water change and stir it up once in a while to get particles into the water column to allow your filters to catch and remove them. Just leaving it alone undisturbed, like you should a DSB, will just create a big nitrate problem.

Just my 2 cents....
 
yes vaccuum it up and whatever is left floating around will get eaten or filtered out, and just keep on top of it so that it does not build up too much, ...
 
I had a lot of nitrate issues and detritus build-up from my crushed coral substrate. I managed to get 100 lbs. of live sand from someone taking down their tank and I'm currently in the process of switching out the crushed coral for fine live sand.

Prior to the switch, I would vacuum up as much of the crushed coral as I could with my weekly water changes.
 
I'll second busybee - it may be a pain, but it's worth the effort. the nitrate issue due to detritus build-up in cc is what caused my tank to crash some years back - not pretty, and none too cheap either!

What's currently in the tank? You should remove the cc and replace with sand in stages so as not to lose your bacteria populations. simply adding the sand won't work as the cc will just rise to the top over time and continue to act as a nitrate factory.

as herkey says, the cc is the wrong size, plus its got sharp edges, both of which discourage benthic life [worms, 'pods, etc] which are vital to keeping the detritus in check.
 
I don't stir it myself but I have a dragon wrasse who likes to move rocks and bury himself in the sand, so he stirs it up quite a bit. I know you have a 10g but you may want to look into a fish that will do it for you.
 
yeah, nassarius snails - about 3 or so and a cerith should work well for a 10 gal. after the switch to sand.
 
right I set up another 10g at work and used live sand. I have some sand stirrers and I don't mess with it or stir it up. I do want to eventually get rid of my crushed coral. I would like to have the benefit of a DSB in all of my tanks.
 
Back
Top