Why so much detrius?

[limitup]

I've got a 30g Finnex that's about 6 weeks old now. It's got a 2" sand bottom, about 20lbs of live rock, a few fish, and about 20-30 snails and hermit crabs. Water parameters are all "perfect".

My problem is that I seem to have a ton of detrius building up everywhere and I don't know where it's coming from.

I feed very little and the fish basically eat everything I put into the tank. I'm not running a skimmer at this point, but I do have a small fuge with cheato in it and do a small water change every few weeks.

Anyone have any suggestions for me?

 

[terrinstevereef]

What are you using for flow, it sounds like you either need more flow, or you need to redirect your powerheads to keep the detitrus in the water column.

 

[limitup]

I have the stock Finnex return which is 475gph and I have a Koralia 1 which is another 400 gph. I have a custom surface skimmer set-up in one of the chambers in the back and then everything flows through a poly filter which catches a lot of stuff, but there's always tons of stuff building up on the rocks and everywhere else. It's weird.

 

[Ms_Jerk]

When you do a water change, do you blow the rocks off with a baster first? That helps me get rid of some.

 

[chris4869]

You can also use a filter sock to catch all the detritus (fish poop).