well i guess the 80lbs of live rock i got was pretty dirty. I've got a lot of trash on my sandbed thats not making it to the sump or skimmer and i'm not sure how to get it out. i've kept tank pretty well stirred up the last couple days but 80% of it ends up back on the rock or sandbed. Is this just one of those things that goes away after time or what? Not what my next course of action should be. Lights are out in the tank now, i'll try to post some pics tomorrow.

I "THINK" I "MAY" be headed in the right direction. I have an extra pump (a maxijet 1200) I use for water changes and such. I dropped it in on the side opposite the overflow and and it seem to be keeping most of that crap a float hopefully now it can make down to the sump and protein skimmer. dunno we'll see. I'm open for any other suggestions.

Eric

Good water movement is always a help in keeping a sand bed clean. It can be difficult sometimes since with sand it can begin to blow around, but it will usually settle down after a while. Sounds like your on the right track. It's always a bit hard to keep sand really clean, I tend to use high current and it does dig some areas out, especially in the middle of the tank, and I also have a few live critters that help keep it clean like a few nassarius snails and a small fighting conch.

I use diamond goby's and sand sifting stars in mine.

Maybe try vacuuming your sand? I vacuum mine once a week when I do my water changes

the siphon wont suck the sand out also? i just assumed it would. on another note can u switch (mix) salt manufacturers? (i.e. Seachem, Instant Ocean) and by mixing I mean for example, using all of your Instant Ocean up on water changes and switching to Seachem for your water changes. (not actually mixing the salt grains)

They say its not good to switch from one salt to another.Ive herd that you need to do it at a slow pace.Now that I've said that I have gone from salt to salt.IMO it really doesn't matter.Most salts are comparable to one another.

http://reefsaltanalysis.googlepages.com/AW...alysis_0208.pdf

I'm not sure I'd be too worried about switching salts. I've switched salts quite a few times, usually buy whatever I can get at a reasonable price, and haven't really ever had any real problems with it. Some people have favorite salts, I don't worry too much about it, though I do test it before I use it (mix it up, check pH, calcium, etc.) to see if I need to supplement it to get the params where I like them. In the end it might be a bigger problem if you were doing a huge water change, but if your only doing even 25% water changes I doubt it will cause any problems.

When I vacuum, I pull out a small bit of sand, but not much, and I have the very fine white stuff. I think it's worth the trade-off.