Stir things up

[Paul B]

Yes, I know, stupid title.
I don't know about you guys but I like to try to keep things natural. A perfectly clean sterile envirnment is neither natural or healthy.
We all have a little detritus hiding somewhere, some of us have mountains of it. This material is mostly beingn but it is composed up of organic and inorganic material. It also compromises some of the food for corals especially SPS corals including gorgonians and gonopora.
Every day or two I like to stir things up using this. I also use this to feed and would never just put food in my tank without target feeding every animal.
My tank is gravel and there is a lot of matter that will get suspended when I blast water at it. I also blast the rocks to clean out the pores. A few times a year I use a diatom filter to eliminate the excess of this material.
The corals and fish seem to really enjoy this and I do also. Of course the tank looks like Half and Half for a few minutes but I kind of like Half and Half.
I have to be careful not to over do this because from experience I have found that small pipefish die from too much suspended matter and I have lost a few of them after a home made typhoon from my diatom filter.
Have a great day

 

[mnat]

Come on and stir it up; ..., little darlin'!
Stir it up; come on, baby!
Come on and stir it up, yeah!
Little darlin', stir it up! O-oh!

On a more serious note, turkey basters are awesome at clearing up the rocks and sand bed. We do this every now and again, also helps keep the bad algae away.

 

[asonitez]

I stir My sand bed at least once or twice a week right before lights out at night.I change my filter socks and stir up the bed real good get all the poop under the rocks and really mixup the sand real good get the water column pretty dirty. Lights go out shortly thereafter. The next morning my sand is bright white my water is clear and My filter socks are filthy!

 

[Nickjr000]

i blow off the rocks about once a week. Lot of junk settles on them