Okay guys.......i know everyone says tons of water flow.......but I have a koralia 2 in my 29 gallon AND my sump pump pushes 350 gph.......if I add any more flow the rocks are going to blow over. Whats the secret to prestine sand in your reef?

creatures............snails, pods, sand stars, good bactirias, i even have a couple nasty looking worms . . .

a lot of it will come with tank maturity, i didn't buy any pods, any worms, and only put about 10 nasarious snails - - now the tank is loaded

the other step would be not to put more food than the fish can eat, anything more becomes trash on the tank floor

Hey fishboy,

As far as patience goes, of which I have very little, I have found that it's good to have 2 or 3 hobbies, besides the reef tank hehe. Mine are golf and cars and motorcycles.

It keeps me away from the tank! Constantly looking at the tank and fiddling with it is the worst thing one can do. If I didn't have other hobbies to keep me from messing with the tank, my tank would be a total mess.

At the beginning of this tank, I was constantly putting my hands in a moving rock around and basically just being a nuisance to the fish and coral. I was at my LFS one day asking the owner some questions about something for the umpteenth time and he said, "the best thing you could do for your tank is leave it alone".

He said to have a plan in the beginning for how you want it to look, get past the first few months and figure out the maintenance regimen for calcium, alk, and mag and then walk away.

Sometimes I'll go days and just glance at it in passing like checking out the readouts for temp, ph or look at the water level in the topoff or kalk reservoir. If I were to stop and look at the tank for too long, there would be something I would want stick my grimey hands in and change or fiddle with.

How often do you vacuum your sand? If you move it around more it might look whiter. Just don't vacuum too deep.

maybe if you vacuum the top 1/2" it might help. What kind of sand do you have? I use aragonite, but I have a brackish tank. My sand is pretty white, and the tank has been up for about 2-3 months.

I have caribsea its a middle grain. My refuge sand is spotless. but the actual tank is a brown tint. I dont ever stir it or vacuum it. I did...but it was makin it worse. I think because i had my hands in it like schigara said. I have photography a full time job and college. On top of that a girl friend. I try not to look too much, but at the same time I like to watch it for at least 20 min a day. I think i may feed too much...BUT all my levels test out okay. no nitrates no phosphates I dose calcium every morning and alkalinity. 20ml so the coraline takes off. My lfs told me that if there is a little excess it will soak into the algae or the corals will take it in. Im at the start of month 6, so i think my tank is still in the stages of maturing. But some of these tanks im seing........it looks like snow white sand.