Removed crushed coral today

[johntan]

I had some crushed coral in my tank, maybe like a 50/50 mix of crushed coral and sugar grain live sand. After seeing another post about taking crushed coral out of the tank I basically raked out all the crushed coral I could reach (which was harboring waste and hair algae) and I would say within 4 hours my corals are huge. They haven't opened up this much in at least a month and now my sand bed is nice and smooth and my shrimp is much more active.

I don't know if it was all the detritus caught in that stuff or just the bits of hair algae but I didn't do any special water changes or anything and my tank looks easily ten times better.

Next week I will definitely get the rest that I couldnt reach when I do my water change, I didn't think it was THAT big of a deal until after I removed this stuff! woo!

 

[marco67]

Corals are huge because of the excess nutrients stirred into the water column. Keep that skimmer chugging away and be ready for another water change ASAP. If it were my tank I'd water change it tomorrow while that excess is still up.
This is not to say you did anything bad.... just saying keep on top of it.

 

[American Flyer]

Why did you get rid of the crushed coral in the first place? How deep of a cc layer did you have?

 

[johntan]

I had the crushed coral live rock and some equipment just given to me last summer from a friends tank. It wasn't deep maybe 2 inches at most, but I had mixed that with my own livesand.

That does explain why my hammer coral gets big every time I stir something up haha

But yeah I am skimming and I dropped in some carbon right after because it did stir up quite a bit.

 

[afboundguy]

Glad to hear you swapped out the CC for sand... You'll be thankful in the long run and it'll be much easier to keep the nitrates down...

Why did you get rid of the crushed coral in the first place? How deep of a cc layer did you have?

Crushed Coral traps debris really well and it is almost impossible to get it all out so it accumulates on the bottom of the tank and leads to high nitrates and a lot of problems down the road...

 

[Aquaman_68]

Can I get an Amen

well it makes me feel good that someone will benifit from that post!! After stirring the sandbed as Marc stated.. A water change wouldn't be a bad thing...The crud you pulled up from under that sandbed is pretty nasty..Carbon..is also good as you said you did..& the skimmer will help out as well......

you may want to test for nitrates as soon as you can.(as well as ammonia)...These levels may have climbed from stirring anything that has been trapped under the CC up..

HTH,
B

 

[johntan]

my crushed coral was added after the sand so it was much easier to remove than I think others who started with it, like I said I was able to just rake it off the sandbed along with most of the junk in it.
I'll test my water today and if my levels are junk then waterchange.

My corals are back to their normal size, how come they don't stay gigantic like when I make a mess!?