? about water changes.

[dclegern]

Another relatively stupid question about water changes.
Since the majority of my issues have been amongst the substrate, I do all water changes with a gravel cleaner-suction hose.
10-20% at a time.
Is this the normal way to do it? or am I constantly disrupting all the beneficial reasons for having the substrate in place?

[allan]

I'd lightly vacuum the substrate, just to grab the detritus... Don't disturb the sand bed though.

[jrnannery]

+1.

[CoryDude]

How thick is your sand bed? Mine is only 1.5 inches deep and I vacuum it every time I change my water, especially in the corners and other low flow areas. Of course I'm only cleaning aprox 20% of the total area since the majority of the sand is under the liverock and other hard to reach places.

[FireWater]

How thick is your sand bed? Mine is only 1.5 inches deep and I vacuum it every time I change my water, especially in the corners and other low flow areas. Of course I'm only cleaning aprox 20% of the total area since the majority of the sand is under the liverock and other hard to reach places.

I agree with Cory. I purposely put in a shallow sand bed (1 - 1 1/2") this go around so I could do a better job at cleaning it. I stir mine around all the time with no ill effects.

[jrnannery]

With a very shallow sandbed, you don't have to worry about harming anything in the bed because you don't have the denitrifying layers that my deep sand bed (DSB) has. How deep is your bed dclegern?

[dclegern]

about a 1" crushed coral/sand bed mix.

[dclegern]

Pulled the coral bed out, cleaned the snot (literally) out of it, washed the rocks, and revised my flow rate.
We'll see how things pan out.