Live Sand In Grand Rapids Mi

[giveortake]

I have a 250 gal tank with all Southdown sand 150lbs live and 180 lbs base rock. Having the typical red cyano and green hair algea issues. 3.5 months old.

I believe that much of my problem is due to my sand not being as "live" as it needs to be. I propped all the nice live rock on top of the base so not much of it was in the sand. Have added nothing else other than several hundred snails/crabs, few fish, few soft corals.

In any event, can anyone spare me a cup or two of your finest old reef sand? West MI only! I can only drive so far to get my beggings. Might also be willing to buy some corals from you if you have any to offer.

No way I am spending money on the GARF stuff. To properly outfit my aquarium at their recommended GARF stuff per gallon would mean I would have to sell my house. Funny thing is I read through their bullet proof scenerio on how you can set up a new system cheap and so easily yadda yadda. Then they explain how they use water, rock, sand and corals from all their other tanks. Well no kidding they can set up another tank cheap & successfully. None of us other mortals have any of those luxuries unless we give them big $$$. Jeesh.........


Back to the sand: Can anyone spare some? Any amount considered welcome.

Thanks,

David

[Zepplin]

Your problem may not be the live sand. How deep is your sandbed? Are you using RO water? When you say "few fish" how many and how large? Few can be a relative term. ;)

Dan

[giveortake]

RO/DI water always: Cartridges probably getting old as I have pumped through probably 600 plus gallons..... But still probably pretty good without testing:

100 plust snails all kinds with 10 Mexican Turbos added recently
150 plus hermits lots of blues and reds with various others they are eating the snails. Plenty of evidence of that.

5 emerald crabs (one has grown to huge proportians)
3 sally lightfoot
2 fighting conch (hung out for 2 weeks been sitting under sand since but I know where they are at and they are alive)
1 horseshoe (small and yes he is bad but he cant possibly be the prob)
5 peppermint shrimp

FISH
yellow tang
blue hippo tang
2 royal grammis
1 lawn mower blenny
1 scooter blenny
1 Engineer Gobie
1 Bantaai cardinal
1 osci clown
1 6 line wrasse

Sand bed is at least 6 inches. 400 plus pounds of southdown.

Two 400 Watt MH lamps. Not quite enough but good enough for now.

Couple corals: some leathers, shrooms, xenia, some other stuff I cant identifiy all doing well.

[giveortake]

Dan,

I think half of my corals came from YOU! I am the dope in the old white vette who you let come into your home and the Nov meeting. Just got me a camcorder with digital pix capability. When I figure it out I will post some pics but it is the typical red Cyano and green hair algea I have seen posted all over the place.

Dave

[giveortake]

Finally all fish are small per their actual size capability. Jouvies...... I had a NASO tang but he got eaten by my Condy Anemonie........ Forgot I also have 6 Green Chromis..... Little pain in the but fish that out compete everyone else for dinner. Had 8 but one died ASAP and was consumed by the crabs. The other decided to jump out of the tank and turn into a potatoe chip under the lights :) Had two of the Bangi Cardinals, but one of them turned into dinner for the Emerald and Sally crabs. Boy were they rippin him apart till I showed up and they drug em behind the rocks where I couldnt watch the rest of the action.

I watched the Mexicans eat some of the hair stuff, but so few and so much that they will never keep up. I used a brush to get it under control and think I can manage it with the brush method for now.......... But the red cyano keeps coming back. I blow it off the rocks and sand do some water changes and it keeps coming back slowly.........

I basically feed 1 block of the frozen small mysis shrimp and two blocks of the PRIME REEF frozen stuff per day plus a couple pinches of formula 1 & 2 flake food per day. Have no idea if this is to much or to little.

Dave

[giveortake]

And the final note. I originally dropped a pill of the Maracyn stuff in about 1 month ago to get rid of the Cyano. It worked great and got rid of 95% in 24 hours. I put the carbon back in cause I was nervous about the medication. Then the green hair showed up and the red Cyano has slowly been making a come back. It is slow. Mostly on the sand. Though it is creeping up the rocks. Easy to blow off the rocks, but the sand is a mess which is why I wanted to get more live sand.

Dave

[battplus]

Maracyn, this causes die off not only with red cyano, but also beneficial bacteria and algae that serves a purpose on the reef.
Stay away from any medications and/or pills for algae removal. Drop in pills are temporary solutions to a bigger problem. Water changes of at least 10 percent to start, then stir the top of the sand bed, followed by using a turkey baster to blow off loose debris etc. causing the algae blooms. After about 4-6 weeks ytou should be just about rid of this problem, but dont stop cleaning, every week you should be doing this to stay successful, and algae free. I just transfered to a 125, and having greast success with this method of maintenance. If you cant afford to change the water every week, then maybe a smaller tank would suit you, to be less cost. Bigger tanks cost more, welcome to the reefing world!

Mike:D

[Zepplin]

I can't agree more with Mike, don't use that chemical... But actually, i'll take it a step further... Don't use any chemicals unless they are absolutely necessairy (i.e. calcium supplement of some form). It sounds like you're on track, but maybe you have some nitrates present? Your reading could be off because the cyano and algea are using up some of the nitrates, but that doesn't mean they aren't present. Also, how much water flow do you have?

Dan

[giveortake]

I have an unusual tank as it is not rectangular. It is triangular which has created issues for me in set up. Two sides viewable, the back has built in overflow. I have a 1200 gph pump putting watter back in the tank which I t'd off and have pointing in two different directions. Then in two of the corners I have a rio 1200 and a rio 1400. This is quite a bit of flow as I have a hard time finding good spots for the corals. While not perfect I think it services the majority of the tank pretty well.

If I had to do it all over again with the knowledge I have now, I would have run some PVC under the sand/rock so the return water shot out from the middle then kept some smaller power heads in the corners to move the rest of the water. Hind site 20/20. No chance to do this baby again any time soon.

Bottom line, I don't think water flow an issue. If the problem was localized to a particular part of the tank maybe, but it is present in areas of high flow and low flow in this tank.

Still looking for SAND DONORS!!!

Thanks

Dave

[giveortake]

FYI I am starting a new regimine of picking up my big ole turbos and placing them directly on the hair algea areas. This is night two. It did make a difference on night one. Not huge but noticable. So I just jockied 3 of the easier to grab guys and placed them back on the problem areas.

I guess as long as they don't mind getting yanked off one piece of rock and moved to another I should be O.K......

For anyone else that reads this thread who may be a NEWBIE (like me), you absolutely must acclimate Turbos and Cleaner shrimp VERY VERY VERY slowly. That means over the course of at least an hour. Drip them bad boys or they will die and you will lose your money. Some stuff you can short cut some things you can not.

Sad note: Second Bangia cardinal died. They were only in the tank for a week. So I dont worry about it much. Seems if they live more than a week they do great. I figure if they die in the first week or so they may have been destined to die basied on lots of reasons that have nothing to do with my tank.

Where are you MI reefers!! GIVE ME SOME SAND! SELL ME SOME SAND! STAND UP AND BE RECOGNIZED!!!

[ofblong]

actually i just did somethign stupid today and only acclimated my cleaner shrimp for 45 minutes today. I thought it was an hour later than it was and put the guy in =[. I had to get ready for work but he seemed okay when I left. I will see when i get home if it is dead.

on to using the turkey baster thing. I was told by many people not to use a turkey baster to disturb the sand. well to not stir up the sand at all. well I got tired of looking at good rock with crappy sand so I started blowing the sand with the baster. my tank is looking tons better since I started doing that. just what I did though.

[RHahn62]

You probably don't need the sand as much as you need to let the tank cycle a bit more. At 3.5 months pretty much all I had in my tank was sand, rock, hermits and snails. I did add some peppermint shrimp to take out some aptasia and an emerald crab for the bubble algae, but I never had a large algae bloom like I did with my first setup. Drop the feeding back to every other day or even less food per day and use the turkey baster. I watched Mike (battplus) wipe out an algae bloom in record time by that method and he has an awsome tank. Otherwise I'm sure someone at the meeting this month will bring some for you! Dan and Meg also have great advice and you can really get great advice and info from the meetings.

[Fishguru]

did you upgrade the tank, or is this a completely new setup? 3.5 months the tank surely is stocked heavy. Along with the above mentioned methods, I would recommend carbon 24/7 with changes in the carbon atleast once a week, if not more. From the sounds of it, you had limited bacteria gorwth, then wiped out a good chunk of that with the medication. Your bioload is HUGE, compared to the amount of Bacteria that could have accumulated in 4 months. You tank is probably starting another cycle, and will probably get worse before it gets better. Do not add any other Livestock/corals until your tank has a chance to stabalize.

[Krusk]

Hey

sorry for the late arrival !!!!

Come over for live sand in my tank.

I got about 600 lbl in my 300G tank

Grand Rapids

Kruxk@msn.com

[giveortake]

FYI: This is a completely new tank. Everything is fresh and raw, not transfered from another tank.

I seem to have stablized. The Green hair is largely under control and I have gotten rid of most of it..

Red Cyano under control but still present. I blow it off and around with the turkey baster method and that seems to help. Doesn't tend to come back as much each time. So things are getting better. Tank is looking better than it ever has. Actually pretty good reletive to other tanks I have seen!! Then again I spend way to many hours cleaning etc.......

I did add more stuff. There goes the bioload. Bought a ton of stuff at the WMMAC meeting and added a Foxface Rabbitfish to help with the hair. Two days later I still haven't seen him eat. He was heavily harrassed by the yellow tang initially though they seem to have found some common ground. Yes that Yellow Tang is MEAN. Doesn't like new commers at all.

Dag couldn't resist that Anthia either...... :) Tang hated him initially too.... Strangly, one of my Royal Grammis has dissapeared. He had been around for two months. Hmmmmmmmmm Must have been crab dinner.

Keepin The Local Fish Store In The Fish Biz,

David

[Fishguru]

I find it a bit concerning, that you come here for help with a problem, are given several ideas/solutions, yet ignore most of them, and continue the path that you had originally been on.

Im not sure if this is a joke, and you are just trying to get a rise out of people, which I hope isnt the case, as I forsee a drastic negative outcome down the road with the present course of action-Brent

[battplus]

Okay, you bought a bunch of stuff at the auction, what did you buy? I am trying to figure out who you might be David. I may have more solutions to problems if I can picture your tank or figure out who you are?

Mike

[giveortake]

Fishguru,

I find it entertaining that you are all upset by my course of action. I did ask for help, and I have followed some advice and not others.

1. That its probably not my sand, thus I havent aggresively pursued more though I would add some if I stumbled into it.

2. Use the baster

3. Dont use any medications

4. Ride it out

5. Pull hair out by hand if possible.

As always there is more bad information than good, so I will take my chances on my own assesment of the "advice" offered.

As I said, over all my tank looks great but I am a perfectionist.

Battplus,

I spent the most money at the WMMAC meeting. I paid first and ran out because the 25$ big ole orange montipora was leaking water so someone helped me stuff it in a white trash bag. I sat right up front on the left side of the room and continually got up to eye ball the auction items. I needed to look at them because I didn't know what hardly any of them were by name. Only knew which ones I thought I wanted by sight :) Hmm. Green Torch with nice long stalk and sad lookin heads, green torch with great lookin big head and very small stalk attached to rock, some bubble thingy looks kinda like the torch cept with whitish bubbles, huge Cauliflower leathers/shrooms, some of D&M's zoo's... Little rock with some diff colored mushrooms... Think thats it.

I also bot the last item the Dan & Meg's Blue Ricordia for 20$ just to get it over with and out of there!

No one in the group has seen my tank. I need to get a mem stick for my new cam corder so I can take some pix.

Cheers,

David

[giveortake]

FishGuru: Forgot to add I am running carbon have been since about month two. Change it about one every 1.5-2 weeks.... Might step it up on your recommendation.

[giveortake]

Then again I might not. Did I get a rise out of you :)

[battplus]

I still can't remember you? We will have to meet at the next meeting. I am the one who sells all the sps colorful frags. I sat at the back of the room, on the left side. I bought the nitrate reducer chamber, and the large monti cap for 20.00, which by the way to anyone reading this, It is turning really nice emerald green with a blue rim!!

Mike

[Gerde]

I guess I forgot, Mike did you ditch the 40 and now just have the 125? Love to see a picture of that Cap when you can...

[battplus]

Scott-

Yes, I transfered to the 125, the cap is doing nice, I'll have pics soon to show you the setup. The tank is almost 36" square, and it is 30" tall. I have the rock in the middle so that the reef is all the way around the tank.

Mike

[cjager]

If you still need sand I have tons to spare! just let me know I live in Burnips. :)