Water Changes

[Brett]

Ok, probably a stupid question about water changes, but here goes.... How often, if ever, does a water change involve vacuuming the substrate? Or is a water change purely that - a change of the water only?
Reason I ask is this: I had a salt FO aquarium for several years successfully. Then I moved and I became "The Fish Killer." After a couple years of being out of the game I've jumped back in and am trying to understand my fish killing pitfalls. I used to always vacuum the substrate during a water change, and I'm wondering if I vacuumed out all of the good little critters living in the sand in an attempt to make my water "clean." And as a result, did more harm than good. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!

[margaritaville]

I would say depends on what your substrate is. dsb no vac because of the bacteria etc. I do vac my ssb once in a while just the top 1/4' or so, and in my 75 I have just crushed coral and I do vac that.

[jhnrb]

What kind of substrait do you have and how deep?

[Brett]

crushed coral/shells about 1 to 2" deep (ballpark guess)

[jhnrb]

I dont use crushed coral, however, I would recommend you lightly stir the upper 1/2 inch of the substrait just before water changes and filter cleaning, about half of the system each time. crushed coral substrait is a nitrate factory as far as im concerned. i prefer a substrate with a sand or oolitic consistency and about 4 inches deep.

[djnzlab1]

HI,
do a wild card seach on Google and read about that article from that DR about DSB and the correct material, I believe coral may be the worst for dsb.
I would buy some cheap sand at lowes rinse it pretty well , I have a couple layers of coarse builder white sand and then very fine on top of that . at least 6 in deep I then put a return to the main tank with a anti siphon air gap in the return ( drilled one tiny hole in the pvc return at the tanks normal water level this only allows a small amount of water to return to the sump if I lose power due to air bleeding back in to the line
I then bought a couple pound of live sand and bugged a petstore for a dozen free bristtle worms. And dumped the live sand and bristtle worms on top of the dead sand and started the cycle.
Almost over night I had brown algae , I the added some silica/phos remover to a filter pad in another filter i use on this tank to clear any additional phos or silica from the cheap sand.
this started the green algae in about a week, I added 10-15 pound of Live rock to the tank and 10-20 pounds of dead rock to the sump in the center so animals can hide in the sump.
And started skimming , every thing peaked in about two weeks and seems stable.NH3 down , Nitrite, Nitrates PH>
So I check the ph and the spec grav alot to be sure, and added a couple fish and all is well so far no DOA and my coraline algae is growing on the lava rocks that were dead in the tank ,go figure, the skimmer is real busy and I added 3 doz cheep snails to the sump ..
we will see..
dpig

[jhnrb]

My recommendation is to use only materials that come from the ocean for your substrait. Any of the regular sands will provide a silicate explosion and you will be constantly battling cyno or algae problems. You need to determine how deep your sand stirrers will go with the substrait you will use, and not put more depth in the tank than can be stirred by your stirrers. such as oolitic max. 3 inches, reef select 1-2mm a max. of 4" ect. This is just my opinion and does not mean other methods will not work, however, recently a lot of hobbist are readdressing the deep sand bed and its long term consequences. hope this helps a bit. Aragonite is the best in my opinion.
with a properly set up substrait and adequate sand stirrers you will not need to mess with the substrait. if you want the top to be clean add a cucumber or two of the correct type and they will keep the top clean.

[djnzlab1]

HI,
Thats what most people think but silica cause its a form of glass , is pretty difficult to dissolve and most sand that is used IE white fine is from beaches and other source the best sand stirrers are bristtle worms, and those sea cukes are nice but can without any warning slime your tank it may be a over reaction to some type of stress but it really gums up the filters, skimmer and has killed things.
Well each their own I have a nice system that works well and have only spent a couple hundred buck you could go for a couple thousand in live sand in rocks...
Doug
I do use RO grade water