A New Sandbed

[Redfish]

Well, I tackled a job tonight that I was dreading, but it had to be done. I removed the Reef Flakes sand bed from the tank. Water in the tank at one point was pretty black when I started messing with the sand that was under the Live Rock. I put a filter sock on before I started, that caught most of the junk when I turned the return pump back on. The new Alpha 170 Skimmer did a great job and took care of the rest of the crude. The tank is just a cloudy white right now, most likely will be clear by morning. I have the Live Rock piled up in the tank right now till I can see better to redo the scape. I might have to add one more bag of sand, we will see how it looks later. I replaced the Reef Flakes with Carib-Sea Fiji Pink Live Sand, its what the the G Man had in stock, so that's what I bought

[Austin]

I just set my 75 gal tank back up. Its been running for about 4-5 months now with a shallow sand bed(some parts barely any sand), a mix between the white and black aragonite. I got tired of looking at black and white pebbles on the top of the fine sand. ive been dreading replacing the substrate. So finally yesterday I picked up a 40lbs bag of Caribsea caribbean live sand from Gerwin. I didnt move any live rock to get the sand.. I just grabbed what sand I could and scooped it out with my net.. its also a good sifter for keeping the smaller particles of sand. 3 hours later I have 35lbs of fresh sand in my tank and the cloudiest water ever. but i kept my system going while doing the whole thing so my skimmer could be working the whole time. and I was thinking my refugium would help settle alot of it also. 8 hours later my water is clear. And I bought a dragon wrasse yesterday along with the sand and he loves the new deep fresh sand.. it was a headache but well worth it.

[Redfish]

Here is a Pic of the tank as it is right now with the new Sand Bed. I know it looks kinda bare I look at it like a blank canvas, I have a small SPS frag package coming next week that will be the start of what I am wanting the tank to look like in the long run.




After the big sand bed change I was wondering what the numbers in the tank would be, so we tested today.
Phosphates 0.10 Changed out the Media so that should come down
Nitrates : Best I can tell 2
Calcium: 410 I added 20ml of Calcium, don't know how much that will bring it up, will test that again in the morning
Alk. : 10 I am kinda surprised at that number being as high as it is, with all the water changes I have been doin lately. I do a water change every week, I did two 30g water changes after treating the tank with Chem Clean. I did two 30g water changes after putting in the new sand bed in the tank. I haven't dosed Alk. in the tank in like 3 months. Everytime I checked the numbers the Calcium was pretty much right on or I had to add a little. The Alk. was in the upper 9 numbers so I never dosed that. Except for a few zoas and a encrusting Montipora, no other corals in the tank, so the only thing using the Calcium is the Corline Alage. Just reaching here, I wonder if the higher Alk. number could have anything to do with the new sand bed.

[Gerwin]

Just reaching here, I wonder if the higher Alk. number could have anything to do with the new sand bed.

I would start with saying 10 dkh is not a bad number, I suggest you measure in meq/l, it gives info in 10ths.
So if we are going to discount any possibilty for error in test and go with it was 9 now 10 as fact, then based off that I can see a bump from a bit of fresh aragonite sand as a logical reason.

[Redfish]

I found out after I posted about having a 10 dkh ALK number, that a 10 dkh really isn't a high number for a tank that isn't being dosed with something like a carbon dosing system. If you are carbon dosing, I have read you want your number to be in the mid 7 or 8 dkh range. If you are running a tank without a carbon dosing system, a 10 dkh number is pretty much normal.