Reef nutrition

How to clean sand bed in an establish tank?

Depends how many critters you have. My 140g had loads of spaghetti worms, bristle worms, a cuc, and a Conch so the sand was pretty self maintaining.



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Gravel vac, or light stirring w siphon running and no pumps on. Little bits at a time. Don't do the whole thing if you haven't messed with it before.
 
I was thinking about vacuuming my sand bed also. My nitrates are creeping up so I'm looking for a way do bring them down.
 
This is a topic is where you will get many different opinions since many factors can be at play. From personal experience, the smaller the tank and the higher the bio-load, the more often the detritus will need to be removed (somehow). For my small 12g Nano which is going on 6 years, I use a gravel-vac weekly on the sand bed and a turkey baster every couple days to clean the live rock.

Detitus removal is an effective way to lower nitrates, but it does take time. While on vacation I had 2 weeks worth of auto-fed pellets raise my nitrates to ~40 and it's taken over two months to get it down to around 5 ppm.
 
My nitrate is 0.15 and phospate is over 4ppm per redsea rest kit. I think phospate more than 4ppm. I have a soccer ball size of cheato in my refugium. For the last four time i tests phosphate and nitrate they are the same level but i notice the brown algea a little more on the glass. Also there are few more spot of green and brown here and there on the sand bed, they are not on top of the sand bed but in the side that i can see through the glass.
 
Algae dusting/film growing on the sides of an aquarium indicates some amount of phosphate is present. Detritus removal will off course also remove a major source of phosphate (decaying matter). I use this technique exclusively to keep PO4 at '0' (Salifert) and typically the tank has undectable NO3 (Salifert).
 
There's a reason quite a few people go without sand, they can become huge magnets for detritus and other crap (literally and figuratively), and unless you have critters going through each layer to keep it clean any benefit of them is quickly lost and then you're left with a big problem.

That said, if you do clean it, you should add that to part of your monthly cleaning regimen. As others have said a gravel vac works good, and can be useful. If anything to start over. Just be prepared to do a good sized water change afterwards, not only from the water you pull out, but also for any stuff in the water column that managed not to get sucked up by the vacuum.
 
I was thinking to just vacuum a small section at a time during my weekly water change. I'm also thinking about adding a bio pellet reactor to my system.
 
Devon said:
I was thinking to just vacuum a small section at a time during my weekly water change. I'm also thinking about adding a bio pellet reactor to my system.
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Correct, if you are just starting to clean a SB start off doing a small area at a time. I have never had a need to use Bio-pellets, so I can't comment on their usage personally.
 
Devon said:
I was thinking to just vacuum a small section at a time during my weekly water change. I'm also thinking about adding a bio pellet reactor to my system.
Click to expand...

I clean about half my sand during each water change, which usually occurs twice a month. I just use a gravel vac and stop the siphon with my finger when the sand starts to reach the top of the large tube.

I ran biopellets for a year or so. I'd recomend vodka or vinegar dosing over biopellets. You can dump some vinegar in your ATO every time you fill it up and it's pretty much as simple as it gets and its realtively difficult to overdose with vinegar. The biopellets worked in my system, but they also create a slime that covered everything and the tank just felt dirty all the time. Regardless of which route you go, start slow and ramp it up over a month or two.
 
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