briterco
Member
Hello,
My 125g has been up for almost 2 years and has been doing well. However, I'm having a slowly upward creeping of nitrates, and I believe it is a problem within the sandbed. I have about 100# live rock, a w/d filter with a small fuge inline, and a skimmer. I've stripped and cleaned the w/d a couple months back, the skimmer says it is for 125g tanks, but I suspect that it might be a bit small. I had routinely been going 5% water changes weekly. About 3 months ago I started doing 10% weekly with deep vacuuming of the sand.
The sand is about 1 1/2" deep. It came as part of the aquarium "kit" I purchased from the LFS (if only I knew then what I know now!). It was about 50# live sand and 50# crushed coral. The live rock sits on top of the bed. I think the mix of CC is part of the problem, along with the LR sitting on about 75% of the sand surface. Also, from what I understand the bed is not deep enough to truly process out the nitrates. At this point, I'm considering removing the bed entirely and either going bare bottom or replace with minimal coverage (1/2"). Is this a good idea, or am I heading for trouble? The other option is, should I just add ore live sand to build up the bed in there now to make it a real deep sand bed (4" deep)?
Would really appreciate any thoughts. I would like to start working on this over the weekend.
Thanks!
My 125g has been up for almost 2 years and has been doing well. However, I'm having a slowly upward creeping of nitrates, and I believe it is a problem within the sandbed. I have about 100# live rock, a w/d filter with a small fuge inline, and a skimmer. I've stripped and cleaned the w/d a couple months back, the skimmer says it is for 125g tanks, but I suspect that it might be a bit small. I had routinely been going 5% water changes weekly. About 3 months ago I started doing 10% weekly with deep vacuuming of the sand.
The sand is about 1 1/2" deep. It came as part of the aquarium "kit" I purchased from the LFS (if only I knew then what I know now!). It was about 50# live sand and 50# crushed coral. The live rock sits on top of the bed. I think the mix of CC is part of the problem, along with the LR sitting on about 75% of the sand surface. Also, from what I understand the bed is not deep enough to truly process out the nitrates. At this point, I'm considering removing the bed entirely and either going bare bottom or replace with minimal coverage (1/2"). Is this a good idea, or am I heading for trouble? The other option is, should I just add ore live sand to build up the bed in there now to make it a real deep sand bed (4" deep)?
Would really appreciate any thoughts. I would like to start working on this over the weekend.
Thanks!