Switching Out Sand

[adpgibso]

What does everyone think about switching out your sand every couple of months to keep it clean and white??? I have green all over my sand, and the clean up crew isn't cutting it. I saw the Tank of the Month fella replaces his sand regularly...beautiful. What do you all think?

[mybug]

It seems to me there are wide varying opinions on substrate. More than any subject it seems.

Lots of agreement on equipment, skimming, rock, corals, fish, etc ..

You get to substrate and there isn't agreement.

I guess that goes with the complexity and diversity of the subject of substrates.

I'm battling a little cyano now. I'm tuning my skimming and I'm increasing frequency and volume of PWCs. And I have vacumed a little sand. Some say that alone is absolutely nuts. Others that have nice tanks I've seen, have on occassion vacumed some out off the substrate and eventually with all the traditionals, eg; less feeding, PWCs, etc .. battled it back.

I don't plan on my substrate being bright white. A tank can look too clean in my opinion. I might even add a cup or two of sand overtime.

Personally, I don't plan on removing or replacing substrate. I want to see my tank last as is if possible.

Best of luck whatever you decide.

[Pandora]

Pieter's tank is also over 2000 gallons (when you calculate all connected systems), with 1,000 kg of live rock, and a very, very large fluidized bed filter. The majority of his bacteria likely reside in the LR and the bed filter (which has fine grains, much like sand, and can act as a repository), not necessarily in the sand. Assuming your tank is not like this and like most tanks... much of your bacteria will live in the sand, and disturbing them is going to cause more of an upheavel than in his. Some people believe that deep sand beds can have a finite "lifespan" and will eventually accumulate too many nutrients to be sustained, but even this theory is on the scale of years (and this is controversial at best, there are also people who do not see these results in a stable DSB held for over a decade). In the average tank, regularly changing out or disturbing the sand bed (unless it is a very, very SSB that is just there for looks) is going to cause a lot of instability and can risk causing a crash from the nutrient release alone, and never would allow proper establishment of any bacteria. Remember clean-looking does not always = clean water. I'd much rather have good water parameters and a little bit of black and green below the surface; I think it's neat to watch the worms and other life below, also.

[adpgibso]

must be some sort of medium between replacing it all and replacing the top 1/4"