well, i had just got my new frag tank system running before the Dr. Mac. trip. The water and pumps and bio ball filter and skimmer had been running for a week before. I added an inch of recycled dry southdown sand a few days before and added a bacter boost. Then added a few live rocks to the sump from my dark curing/cleaning barrels. and all seemed fine when i put the new frags on the snowy white sand. But about the fourth day little spots of diatom? cyano started appearing on the new sand. and soon within a week, all was covered in a tan, bubbly mess on the sand and tank walls. The more i stirred and filtered the worse it seemed to get. stir the sand and in a few hours it had all settled back and covered the sand again.
So i tried something different. If i recall , diatoms and cyano are free cells that just like to clump together in the light. so I tried adding a dose of SeaChem Clarifier(floculant) and stirred stuff up again before bed. well next day it was only half as bad on the sand and glass, and the water was clearer. so I used a soft cloth to wipe the tank walls of algae and rinse it out and stirred the sand again, and next day even less. The filter and the skimmer were pulling a lot of it out too.
The shallow sandbed seemed to speed up its cycle. lots of bubbles as the floculant seems to have stuck the good bacteria to the new sand. and now after 3 days of adding a half dose of reef safe clarifier, the tank is looking nearly clear of the slime. and the frags are peerking up.
Could this be a step we have been missing on rapid cycling a tank? Good ole clarifier? If i remember cyano goes back to free floating in the water at night. which is why the sand bed seems to clear by morning. but when the lights go on, they gel again. the floculant makes it easier for the skimmer to pull it out too , I guess.
no, just the opposite. Floculant helps the tiny particles FLOCK and bind together into bigger lumps that can either settle out or stick to a filter pad. day 3 or 4 today after clarifier, and the tank is completely clear or any cyano or diatom on the sand, rock or glass. its either the Seachem Clarifier or the Marc Weiss Bacter Vital ive been adding . but i was adding the bacteria from day one. I dosed with the clarifier a few days ago after the slime had covered everything.
So its either a fast cycle, or the clarifier helped the skimmer pull out the stuff. The seaclone 150 has a cup full of real dark gunk. So I hope it stays that way. The sandbed went bonkers filling up with gas bubbles while the cyano on the top made bubbles and floated streamers to the surface. but after it cleared, i stirred the sand and now the bubble activity has gone. should be bio balanced now. it was used sand i had rinsed and dried from an old tank. probably had nutrients in it. No fish in this system, just two cerith snails and 36 frags so far. That’s all I want, is a clean algae free frag tank.
question, you say recycled southdown sand, how long ago did you aquire the southdown sand.
i ask this because caribsea has an exclusive rights contract with Marcona Ocean Industries, who is the only company allowed to mine the sand at all, to sell it as reef tank sand. this is why the sand is so expensive.
southdown was selling the very same sand as play sand for sandboxes and reefers in the late 90’s and early 2000’s found out and were buying it for $5 per 50 lbs bag over caribseas crazy prices, once that was learned southdown quickly started adding a % of quartz to it and labeled it “NOT FOR AQUARIUM USE” to avoid a lawsuit.
if you got it after 2004ish its probably got quartz and causing phosphate problems.
kens is the real deal. i bought 300#s from him years ago and still have it in all of my tanks.
as far as playsand goes, there is not a whole lot of evidence showing that silica sand SIGNIFICANTLY contributes to phoshpates in saltwater. what quartz sand does to is breakdown to silica which might not be a bad thing since its a basic building block for a lot of microfauna. some people claim that silica sand increases diatom growth but i think thats anecdotal at best. the biggest difference between silica and limestone sand is its ability to buffer. however, even that difference is minimal because of the base PH of our tanks. ive used playsand in my fuges with no problems.
if a person had the money to spend between 10-15 times more money on sand for limestone based sand then go for it. i know i would ;D
years ago is the keyword there, and im glad it was the good stuff, i know a guy who was able to aquire 2 tons of the aragonite sand for $30 in florida in the early 2000’s (that came to a screaming halt lol)
i’ll put it like this, we must filter tap water that we drink and mix for iced tea because its not pure enough for our reef tanks and whats good for us isnt for our reef tanks.
i add 000 silica sand to my sealcoat with warnings of wearing masks for the danger of silicosis… if its not good for me, its not good for my reef :BEER
Yes, any bagged playsand needs to be washed to remove nasty stuff from it, but if you are worried about the quarts/sillica sand breaking down into phosphates or sillicates the I hope you dont use glass heaters or a glass tank. They have the exact same chemical structure as white quartz play sand.
The only downside is that playsand can scratch glass tanks if it gets in the magfloat since it is the same material.
[quote=“icy1155, post:8, topic:1843”]
The only downside is that playsand can scratch glass tanks if it gets in the magfloat since it is the same material.[/quote]
[quote=“icy1155, post:8, topic:1843”]
The only downside is that playsand can scratch glass tanks if it gets in the magfloat since it is the same material.[/quote]
Limestone or aragonite sand will scratch the tank just as fast when it gets in the mag float
[quote=“icy1155, post:8, topic:1843”]
Yes, any bagged playsand needs to be washed to remove nasty stuff from it, but if you are worried about the quarts/sillica sand breaking down into phosphates or sillicates the I hope you dont use glass heaters or a glass tank. They have the exact same chemical structure as white quartz play sand.
The only downside is that playsand can scratch glass tanks if it gets in the magfloat since it is the same material.[/quote]
an interesting note on that, glass has about 1/3-/1/4 sodium oxide and calcium oxide in addition to the SiO2, which actually makes it easier for diatoms to pry the silic acid or silicate out of the glass wall than granular Sio2, which in fact they do!!! but nobody ever has a diatom bloom long enough to get etched glass out of it.
[quote=“IanH, post:12, topic:1843”]
Or just don’t clean the tank…[/quote]
Yes. Like L-D said, the sand he bought from me, is the good old Southdown Playsand i bought from Home Depot like 7-8 years ago. I think i bought like 1200 pounds of the stuff at $4 per 50# bag. I used some, dumped some old used stuff, but still had a bag or so and a bag of used sand i rinsed and sun dried a few years ago to keep. thats in my new frag tank now. just an inch. im trying without a plenum this time for fun.
If you check Reef Central and other sites, you will find hundreds of reefer with silica sand beds with no ill effects. it seems the current silica sand preferred is KOLORSCAPE Playsand from K-Mart and Home Depot. It just has Zero buffer potential.
I got a couple bags of that too. if the south down dont work so well, maybe too fine, I will replace it with the Kolorscape silica playsand.
That is a good article by Randy. In fact , if you read some of his posts on his own tank, He actually doses a little silica to support the micro fauna in his reef tank. all things in proportion.
The reason Marcona stopped importing sand a few years back was they ran into safety and environmental regulation problems in Ft. Pierce, Fl. where they used to dump barges full of the sand. their boats and procedures were in bad shape. they lost their permit. they used to bring in a barge full. dump it on the dock in a big pile. Carribe sea would scoop up sand from one side of the pile for tank use, and the rest went to concrete plants for aggregate and to new castle for playsand. True carribe sea no doubt spent more care cleaning, washing and size grading the sand for tank use. but we can do the same.
Marcona folded but i believe the same people and equipment formed a new company to import arragonite once again, to ft pierce. I do believe this is the new company.
but they only sell by the truck load. Like Steve Pro bought for his Green House coral farm up north. He bought a 20 ton load to fill his poly tubs.
I have been using a bottle of Marc Weis Bacter Vital i won in a raffle. they say it cycles a tank in 3 days. not so sure about that. but i started with this, and a little of the others i have around too. seachem Stability, and a 2 part Nitromax Marine. plus some clarifier when the cyano got heavy. Its been doing ok since the big clear up. but a tinge of brown diatom is still a ppearing on the sand and glass. I have to rebuild my RO unit. the membrane is shot, and the cartidges are old. but the frags i have in the tank are brightening up real good. lets see what better RO water will do. should cut down the feed for the diatoms.
