dirty sand

[denny80689]

My tank has been up for like 9 months now and everythign is good. My hippo tang, perc and a few green chromis have been living hapily (with a few ICH outbreaks for good measure on the Hippo.) but my sand bed is always dirty looking. Usually a dark grey with some red or green mixed in. Not slimy looking just not clean. My cleanup crew is always working hard and eating like crazy and I have had ok coraline growth. Is it normal for the sand to be discolored?
Ill have to post some pics later.

 

[ouchthathu]

I've got the same problem. My cleanup crew constist of 20-30 Blue & Red hermits, 30-40 nassarius snails, 10 turbo astrea snails and a serpent star. I see pics of peoples white sand and I just get jealous. Mine continually has to be vacuumed once a month to clean the detritus off of it.
I've heard that adding a tiger cucumber would help (waiting for them to stock them on saltwaterfish.com site) but I haven't seen it first hand. Any advice on a sand whitenning critter would be appreciated.

 

[bang guy]

Originally Posted by denny80689
My cleanup crew is always working hard and eating like crazy
Does your cleanup crew have Hermits that search in the sandbed? If so that could be your problem.
A live sand bed needs to be live - ie. full of worms and microcritters (infauna) that eat organic matter in and on the sand. If you have a predator eating the infauna then there are fewer animals in the sand to keep it clean.

 

[ouchthathu]

Originally Posted by Bang Guy
full of worms and microcritters (infauna) that eat organic matter
Is there anyway to add these guys to your tank? My liverock pretty much came hitchhiker-less and the sand was agralive. The only thing that's been added is the stuff ordered off this site... so far I haven't seen a listing for "worms and microcritters" or I'de order them ASAP

 

[duke jjz]

Get a sea cucumber. He ate up all my detrius in my 75

 

[bang guy]

Originally Posted by OuchThatHu
The only thing that's been added is the stuff ordered off this site... so far I haven't seen a listing for "worms and microcritters" or I'de order them ASAP
A small box of Premium live sand will do the trick ---> SWF.COM Live Sand Aragalive isn't any more useful than dry aragonite sand. To get the critters you need to obtain live sand.

 

[denny80689]

I dunno. I ordered my LS and LR from this site. the LR was hitchhiker free and I never saw any worms or anything else in the sand. I have about 30 hermits but they are all zebra leg and very small. They pick at the rocks and I never have any green algea (knock on wood) but the sand still looks terrible.

 

[trainfever]

try adding a sand sifter star.

 

[jester805]

I just started having the same problem with my tank. I have a 75 gallon with 80 lbs of LS and around 50 lbs of LR. After 6 months of my tank being setup, the sand all looks dirty. I'm going to try either a sand sifting star or a hermit crab.