Preventing sandstorms possibly replacing sand

ltkenbo

Reefing newb
I have the real fine sugar grained sand in my aquarium, from pictures I've seen this doesn't seem to be common. Most people seem to have sand with a slightly larger grain then mine, not gravel, but not sugar sand (0.1-0.5 mm sand). The thing that's annoying about mine is that I it's hard to keep flow good on the substrate without causing a sandstorm or eroding it. I thought perhaps not only would a larger grained sand look better but maybe not be eroded as easily as very fine particles or fly everywhere. Is this true? I see all these aquariums with corals very low to the sand without problems with sand landing on them.

Also, if I were to change the sand, how would I do it? Remove a little bit of sand at a time until most of it is gone, then add new sand? I do have life in my sand, like tube worms so do I have to sacrifice these?

I have something like this now:
Natures Ocean® Marine White Sand #0

and was going more for this, more like 1.2-1.9 mm grains:
Natures Ocean® Australian Gold Sand #5
Natures Ocean® Indonesian Coral Reef Sand
 
I would think that you should be able to syphon it out with a hose, maybe do it the next time you do a big water change? If it's that fine it should suck right up.
 
Yeah I know it would siphon out fine, but I don't want to remove too much of the natural biological filter at one time, you know? I was wondering if it would be a problem because of that. I was also wondering if bigger grained sand would help with the sand storm problem.
 
You can get the thicker stuff and mix it in a little and see if that helps. If not just lay the thick stuff over the thin, as long as its the same color it shouldn't be noticeable. I have mix matched a lot of the sand in my tank from thin to big to bigger.
 
Yeah that's what I was maybe gonna do, but I'd kind of like to get some of that more golden sand, don't think it would look very good, I'll probably just switch it out, the sand has been the same since before I really cured my rock, so it's probably got a lot of built of phosphates and such.
 
i am having the same issue i used the sugar size sand and i always get sand reaidue and eroding from the front glass over severeal days i always see fine pieces of sand flying around and it settles on the rock??? what did you do for this problem??
 
Whatever you do be careful to not stir up the sand too much as this could very likely cause a huge nitrate spike.
 
Fine sand stays at the bottom so adding a more coarse sand on top is no problem.About a 1/2'' coarse on top will give you a 2'' bed,no problem there.
 
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