Ugly Substrate

[gilligan50]

My tank has been up about two years exactly now. My only question is about the substrate. I have crushed coral, a great LFS guy told me to do it when I set up the tank and have loved it BUT, it is getting ugly. What I mean is that it is getting covered with red coraline algae so it is spotted and doesn't give me that great contrast that a beautiful solid white or even light tan substrate would. Just wondered if this has happened to anyone else, or if you guys have suggestions. It is a 29gal tank with about a 3.5 inch substrate bed in it, run about 50 pounds of LR. I didn't know if I could buy 5 pounds of live sand and spread over the top of the crushed coral, or if I should buy more of that, it was "live" crushed coral when I got it. Anyway any suggestion would help.

 

[blazehok68]

my suggestion is to get rid of the crushed coral and replace it with live sand. you probably wont have to use live sand, cause the tank is already established and probably will turn live because of all the live rock. its a pain in the butt, but it is well worth the effort.

 

[thomas712]

My question is why is it getting covered, isn't it being vacuumed? I had great coralline in my 55 when I had crushed coral but because I was constantly vacuuming it it never had coralline growing on it. Are you sure its not cyno?
Thomas

 

[gilligan50]

At the most I stir it up when I am cleaning algae but I don't vaccum it very much at all. The only time I vaccuum it is when I am trying to really hit the dead spots during water changes. Everything that I have been told is that you don't want to vaccuum live sand because you could take out a lot more beneficial organisms than you will get rid of harmful things.

 

[thomas712]

Wait... You have a mix of crushed coral and sand?