Help needed Shifting substate

[Jamie McGrath]

Hello all, I would like someones advise. I recently removed all of the sand from my tank, put a layer of tropica plant growth substrate at the bottom and then covered it with the sand which I had removed. All looked well and I replanted the tank. Things were going well until I noticed that the flow from the filter and power head was picking up the top layer of sand from the front of the tank and moving it to the back. This was slowly exposing the layer of plant growth substrate. At first I was picking up handfulls of sand from the back and covering the tropica stuff at the front. This process was hard to keep on top of and was making the tank cloudy every time I did it. There is now a large patch of exposed tropica substrate at the front of the tank. Now I only have too look at the tank wrong and it clouds up with mud, the plants leaves get covered in a thin layer of soil and my filter media is covered in the stuff.
I am loosing patients with my tank and could really do with some advise. Do you think I should recap the bottom layer with something else, is there too much flow in the tank, shall I just bin the whole thing?

Thanks for your advise in advance, I did take some photos but when I try too upload them it says the file is too big for the server to process!

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Do you think I should recap the bottom layer with something else, is there too much flow in the tank, shall I just bin the whole thing?

I think you just need some coarser sand and small pebbles where the Tropica substrate is exposed.

I haven't got any at the moment, but when I kept Hypancistrus I just <"mixed together sand and 2mm flint gravel"> and let the water sort it. For any areas which were cleaned all the way down to the glass I put some rounded cobbles in.

cheers Darrel

 

[zozo]

Well bottom line is obvious if your flow is shifting the sand the flow is to strong for the sand you are using.. The first question which comes to my mind is why do you have so much flow? And do you realy need so much flow?

If you do, then the sand you are using is not what you should have put in there.

Sorry for the short silly and obvious answer, but that's realy all to it.. There is not much more advice to give than, reduce flow, or maybe redirect the flow.. Or choose a different kind of substrate to cap.

Maybe we should first go into to the question, do you realy need so much flow? Why do you think you need that power head?

 

[alto]

if your flow is shifting the sand

yep I just adjusted the outlet (spray bar) angle slightly