# sand bed



## evanlundberg4 (Aug 27, 2012)

I just have a quick question about the sand bed in my tank. I know that over time, like your rock, your sand will bind up excess nutrients. Recently I've stumbled over some reading talking about siphoning out some sand from time to time and replacing it with new in order to reduce the likelihood of having issues down the road with high phosphates and such. Is this something that people regularly do and if so how often should you be doing it?
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## Reefing Madness (Jun 26, 2011)

Never heard of that one before. I've heard of doing the hurricane affect on your tank once a year. Stir the crap out of it, blow off the rocks, but just siphon off the top of the sand, to many thing in there you don't want to mess with over time.


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## evanlundberg4 (Aug 27, 2012)

Yeah I donno man...it was on the reef tank forum. Seemed to contradict what I read on here which was to leave it alone.
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## evanlundberg4 (Aug 27, 2012)

I just have another question about the sand bed. I've been doing some more reading and a lot of books say put your rocks in before the sand because number one its more stable but also number two you don't end up with stagnant areas in the substrate and the possibility of hydrogen sulfide gas. When i set up my tank I put my sand in first then my rock. Its only like an inch to an inch and a half deep. My rocks are plenty stable but is it going to cause a problem down the road?


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## Reefing Madness (Jun 26, 2011)

Don't worry about the Hydrogen Sulphide gas, that would build up in areas where the sand got deep on you. When putting rock in the sand, yoiu want to twist them into place, displacing the sand, you want as much of the rock on the bottom of the tank as possible for stability, and for sand sifting critters, they tend to topple rocks that aren't sitting on the bottom.
http://www.ronshimek.com/deep_sand_beds.html


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## evanlundberg4 (Aug 27, 2012)

Yeah I twisted them down into the sand quite a bit when I put them in. I knew they had to be stable. So pretty much that's only for the deep sand beds then you're saying.


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## Reefing Madness (Jun 26, 2011)

Yea, basically anything over 4" can cause the Hydrogen Sulphide Gas problem.


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## evanlundberg4 (Aug 27, 2012)

This is why I'm part of this forum. So much miss information out there. Thanks for the info. I appreciate all the advice man


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## Reefing Madness (Jun 26, 2011)

:thumbsup:


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## evanlundberg4 (Aug 27, 2012)

Do you vacuum yours during water changes?
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## Reefing Madness (Jun 26, 2011)

Nope, never have. Thats waht my powerheads are for, blowing the stuff around so the sump gets it. But, I have heard of people doing it.


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## evanlundberg4 (Aug 27, 2012)

I'm not sure I want to...my thinking is I could be vacuuming up my copepod population and disturbing things way more than I should.
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## Reefing Madness (Jun 26, 2011)

Yea, pretty much.


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