Please tell me about bacterial bloom, etc.
Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 6:17 pm
I was just about to get the dishes out of the tank and fill them with tonight's food and treats when I noticed some green-ish looking sand along the side of the tank -- it's in 2 different spots (i'll try to get a pic up later)...
a little background: I setup this new 55 gallon last November (2014) with a mixture of 5:1 playsand to EE.....since then I have only surface-fixed huge holes and done minimal shifting sand around, and adding a little here and there due to settling. I also have a false bottom, which has a small layer of water in it that I haven't drained/siphoned yet, but plan on doing it soon.
It almost looks like mold (is that what bacterial bloom is?) and it's about halfway down the 6-7 inches that I have in there.....I'm not sure if I should do anything about it? There's no weird smell or anything, and one crab seems to be digging pretty close to it right now - I have 6 total, and I believe only 1 is molting right now, although I have no idea where he would be and would be worried if I messed up a molter digging down to check it out.
So a few questions: what could the green-ish looking sand be? Do you think it would be dangerous to the crabs? Should I dig in that area to investigate, risking uncovering a crab? Does sand go moldy? if it's time for a cleaning of the entire tank, how do you guys manage going about it? Isn't at least one crab molting at all times? (although I just recently had a date that all 6 were up - that's so rare I even put it on the calendar!
) Thoughts please....
a little background: I setup this new 55 gallon last November (2014) with a mixture of 5:1 playsand to EE.....since then I have only surface-fixed huge holes and done minimal shifting sand around, and adding a little here and there due to settling. I also have a false bottom, which has a small layer of water in it that I haven't drained/siphoned yet, but plan on doing it soon.
It almost looks like mold (is that what bacterial bloom is?) and it's about halfway down the 6-7 inches that I have in there.....I'm not sure if I should do anything about it? There's no weird smell or anything, and one crab seems to be digging pretty close to it right now - I have 6 total, and I believe only 1 is molting right now, although I have no idea where he would be and would be worried if I messed up a molter digging down to check it out.
So a few questions: what could the green-ish looking sand be? Do you think it would be dangerous to the crabs? Should I dig in that area to investigate, risking uncovering a crab? Does sand go moldy? if it's time for a cleaning of the entire tank, how do you guys manage going about it? Isn't at least one crab molting at all times? (although I just recently had a date that all 6 were up - that's so rare I even put it on the calendar!
) Thoughts please....
