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substrate ammonia
- Thread starter gardnerkr
- Start date
gobyvin
Non-member
That looks like hydrogen sulfide more likely. Anaerobic byproduct from decaying waste material (detritus). If you do not vacuum or stir sections of your sand bed during water changes (or have critters to help do that stirring continuously for you... gobies, sand dwelling snails, worms, etc) and use too fine a sand grain, the lower layers are anoxic and that can be a good thing in smaller cleaner beds, as it can eat up nitrates and lower needs to change water, but in most cases when too much detritus is allowed to collect in a sand bed this can become sour and the hydrogen sulfide will smell like rotten eggs or low tide at the mudflats or marshes near the ocean...
Natural occurrence but the gas is toxic in larger quantities in a closed system (aquarium).
Don’t panic. You can siphon a couple cups of sand into a bucket with tank water to test if this is the case. If you smell the odor, do not put that sand or water back in the tank. Make sure water movement is good, filters are clean skimmers are operating well and replace with clean seawater. Each water change remove more of the sand with a siphon and don’t put it back.
If you want to keep the sand, clean it and dry it out, replace later. You can rinse in fresh water, bleach treat and dechlorinate/rinse again and reuse it instead of buying new sand, or go with larger grain size and thin bed that gets a regular vacuum with water changes. I hope this helps. I think that yellowish layer might be full of crud in your picture... thus my response.
Natural occurrence but the gas is toxic in larger quantities in a closed system (aquarium).
Don’t panic. You can siphon a couple cups of sand into a bucket with tank water to test if this is the case. If you smell the odor, do not put that sand or water back in the tank. Make sure water movement is good, filters are clean skimmers are operating well and replace with clean seawater. Each water change remove more of the sand with a siphon and don’t put it back.
If you want to keep the sand, clean it and dry it out, replace later. You can rinse in fresh water, bleach treat and dechlorinate/rinse again and reuse it instead of buying new sand, or go with larger grain size and thin bed that gets a regular vacuum with water changes. I hope this helps. I think that yellowish layer might be full of crud in your picture... thus my response.
gobyvin
Non-member
You have a small tank, if you find it is crud and hydrogen sulfide, you could transfer all your livestock and rock to a tub and save your water clean with the animals, then dump the sand, replace with new rinsed stuff and set it right back up with old water and go from there too.
officeaquachuck
Non-member
I find hydrogen sulfide sand is black, that does not look black to me. regardless of whether it is or not, I simply siphon the offending sand out, rinse n swirl in freshwater, then put it back in until the next water change. I do this on each water change, i've not detected any negative reaction, plus it looks lot nicer too.
gobyvin
Non-member
Yup, I agree it should be black if it is severe, but it looks yellowish, maybe??? Not a real clear picture. It may also be trapped oxygen from algae growing on the glass under sand. Your method of freshwater rinsing small quantities and replacing is something I have done too, if it isn’t too dirty and the quantity small.
How old is the tank? Does it look like that throughout the sand bed? I have varying depths of sand in my tank due to flow anywhere from barely 1/2" to about 3" and I don't disturb the sand bed. I don't mind the "dirty" look of the discolored sand up against the glass so I'm off the if it's not causing an issue (and never has for me so far in almost 20 years of reefing) let it be. If it's not disturbed it could be beneficial to your tank as mentioned above.
I just tested my ammonia, nitrite and nitrates for the first time in god knows how long this morning as I picked up a new Red Sea test kit mainly so I could test my pH and my nitrates were undetectable with my sand bed that has all sorts of nasty colored stuff lol...
For reference here's my most recent FTS and you can see all the nasty looking multi colored sand bed that's against the front panel...
I just tested my ammonia, nitrite and nitrates for the first time in god knows how long this morning as I picked up a new Red Sea test kit mainly so I could test my pH and my nitrates were undetectable with my sand bed that has all sorts of nasty colored stuff lol...
For reference here's my most recent FTS and you can see all the nasty looking multi colored sand bed that's against the front panel...
thank u sm
ive had it for about a year and a half, it only looks like that up in small groups but there is not a lot of it. thank u sm!!
