What do u use for sand stirring?

[chanbi]

Hi, wonder what is the best way to keep my sand bed (only 1-2") clean? I started off wrongly by using pretty fine sand. I realised the problem when i start siphoning. I am unable to separate the detrius with the sand! (how stupid am i?) So i can't really use that method. I am currently using some blue hermit crabs plus a Sand Sifting star fish & a Tiger-striped Fancy Serpent Sea Star to do the job. I used to buy the golden head sleeper to sift the sand and they do a great job but so far i bought 3 but none seem to be able to last longer than 1 mth (not enough food in the sand for them?). So far my sand bed is sort of under control (although sometime can see some of the sand cluster together n small lump) but as i'm planning to add some more fishes, wonder whether there are better way?

[hongqixian]

Sand sifting stars practically sterilize the bed. They eat lots of things. You could try a Black sand sifting cucumber. (The brightly coloured cucumbers can release toxins.)

If you see clumps of sand break them up.

[Achilles Tang]

I use my tongs to stir the very top layer of sand once in a blue moon to kick up a detritus storm, notice that some corals and gorgonians open their polyps to catch them (or the bacteria) for food.

Don't ever stir up a DSB!

Actually, with a live sandbed, you should have enough worms, copepods, brittlestars etc to clear up the detritus.

The secret to clean sand is to have good circulation to kick detritus up into the water column where they will be swept down into the sump or preferably the refugium where they can settle for the refugium creatures to consume.

[coelacanth]

i will say NO to using holothuroids. one of it died mysteriously and wiped out all my fish...

u can use a powerhead to blow the top layer of the sand once a while to feed the corals.

[Achilles Tang]

holothuroid is sea cucumber (for those who are scratching their heads right now)...

Anyway, the only reef-safe holo.. ur... sea cuke, is the donkey dung sea cucumber (totally black) or the tigertail sea cucumber (seldom seen in LFS).

In most of my dives, you can find the black sea cucumbers on sandy bottoms... but they do not grow as big as the more colourful ones... which can be as thick as from your middle fingers of both hands joined with both thumbs... as thicker than a firehose...

In nature, the more colourful the creature, usually the more toxic it is...

What colour was yours, Coelacanth? Btw, I have never seen a living coelacanth yet... and probably never will... heh heh!

[chanbi]

I used to stir the top layer of the sand once a while and it usually help. But i also realised that when i do that, sometime after 1-2 days, some of the tangs will have some white spot (under a bit of stress from the mess i create?). So far it goes off after ~1week without killing any of them. But that scare me off and wonder i will always be so lucky?

[coelacanth]

hi Achilles Tang,

mine is the sea apple.... sick man when i think about it. cost me a lot money to recover from the death of the fishes. But strangely, my water parameter seems to be more stable after the incident... maybe holothurin is still useful after all.

i doubt ppl will buy the "shit" cucumber as its not so appealing to have something like dat on ur sand bed, kekeke...

for me, i wun have to worry about stirring up the bottom layer of the dsb cos i had a layer of net 2 inches under the top layer.

[Wei]

Hi coelacanth,

those blaack sea cuke won't harm yr fishes even if its die. Its self defence is releasing super sticky white threads to disable predator. My purple tang kena before. The white thread stick to its mouth and it cannot open until i manually remove them. They will only do so if they think their survivor is threaten. Seen it do once only.

Yr fishes must have eaten the eggs released by the sea apple. Many pple just got it cause its nice color but dunno they are putting a time bomb in their tank. Nvm, at least now pple know the danger of keeping a sea apple.

Wei

Happy Reefing!

[hongqixian]

hi Achilles Tang,

mine is the sea apple.... sick man when i think about it. cost me a lot money to recover from the death of the fishes. But strangely, my water parameter seems to be more stable after the incident... maybe holothurin is still useful after all.

i doubt ppl will buy the "shit" cucumber as its not so appealing to have something like dat on ur sand bed, kekeke...

for me, i wun have to worry about stirring up the bottom layer of the dsb cos i had a layer of net 2 inches under the top layer.

The rotting sea apple is also chock-full of toxins. Actually the 'shit' cucumber is pretty good at hiding.. also the intense black colour is not ugly (to me anyway). It gets covered with detritus once in a while and sheds it's mucous layer then becomes clean again. Very interesting animal to see it ingest sand.

[hongqixian]

Oh, I also once found a white cucumber in the ulva(seaweed) clumps at Pulau ubin.... not exactly Chek Jawa though. It oozed out a bit of yellow pus-like liquid and I put it back in the water.

[coelacanth]

quite true, in the marine world everything is beautiful. amazing world we have... how lucky we are.