Sandbed to clean?

[Blindrage]

Well I may have accomplished something I was not intending to do.

I am now more than two months out of cycle. I plan to add to my CuC, but they are doing pretty well keeping up. My LMB took care of the diatom bloom, and is now working on the GHA that I expected. My fish and doing great. My coral is all doing well with good extension, color, and some growth.

In fact I could not be more pleased with the general health of the tank... at least at the macro level. The micro level seems to not be coming along as well.

I have added pods to my fuge twice now, but I have never seen anything moving on the rock, sand, or in the algae when I check it. Day or night, does not matter. My sand bed is also looking pretty sterile. Not a fuzzy worm, starfish, or anything else to be seen anywhere in the tank that I did not add.

The pods are an easy solution. I just need to try adding more now that I have the macro-algae in the fuge. The last time I added them I assumed they would make a home in the rocks, and the move to the algae once it was added. They may have done that and just be too few in number for me to see, but adding more cannot hurt anything.

The sandlife is not so simple for me. Is there a good way to introduce the creatures we want in a thriving sandbed without great risk of all the pests that are so hard to get rid of once established?

 

[jahmic]

You're months in...in takes a year or more for that microfauna to establish in the tank. Your best bet would be to get a few scoops of sand out of an established tank...then just wait, and wait some more.

I added a few feather dusters, brittle stars, spaghetti worms, and asterina stars to my newest build about 5 months ago...I've only ever seen the feather dusters since they don't move. As for the rest...they are either hiding, or it's possible they died off while the tank was maturing due to a lack of food...I'm going with the latter explanation. Depending on how you started the tank, you potentially are dealing with a fairly sterile environment. I started with dry rock and sand, so chances are that microfauna just didn't survive. Did you start with sand from an established tank? How about the rock? If you started with live rock from a mature tank I would think it's odd to not see as much life...but if you started with dry rock or just a bunch of live rock from a stock tank at the lfs, it may take a while.

I would wait until your tank is fully stocked, then start adding those critters again. I'm about 7 months in and still haven't added anything but pods to the tank; I plan on waiting a few more months before I start pulling chitons, starfish, and worms out of my other build to add to this tank...they need a well established system to survive IMO. Another thing to consider is that sand-dwelling critters have the disadvantage of living in what could be a toxic environment until the bacteria are fully established; sulphur-reducing bacteria are going to take much longer to establish themselves than aerobic bacteria.

As for the pods...I would try dosing the tank with live phytoplankton to keep their numbers up. We have a site sponsor that can help with that

The risk of introducing pests is real...but it's also fairly unavoidable if you are trying to diversify the life in your tank. Not to say you could get lucky and end up with no pests...but there really isn't a sure way to only add the beneficial stuff unless you pick through a bucket of sand and remove some feather dusters and worms.

 

[Blindrage]

Thanks for the info. My live rock was pretty much all from the bins, so I was not expecting to many hitchhikers. I will give it 6 more months, and then worry about adding anything else that might be needed.