Methods for cleaning crushed coral?

No clue...cheapest I could get years ago (we're talking almost 10 years ago)...probably from one of the pet store chains (Petsmart I think).

 

LMAO I had that one and gravel constantly clogged the little plastic piece betwen the tubing and the unit. Maybe they make that part of it better now. I'm going to dig through my basement when I get home to se eif maybe 1 of the 2 I have/had still work. I had the one in the link and another that was longer and thinner with a purple cap on top.

Thanks all for your help!

 

IME, cleaning the detritus trapped in CC and WC have nothing to do with each other.

I've been keeping a CC bottom for over 2 years now and have had 0 nitrates as well.

I clean my CC via a strong CuC from reefcleaners.org

I try to never stir up the CC. If I have to in some rare event (like moving rock) I'll turn off all flow first and wait for it to settle before turning flow back on. This would be a good time to do a WC - but only bc you're taking advantage of a rare situation...

I use a syphon gravel thingy to do it. It has a hand pump on one end to start the syphon.

I have taken the little guard out so it doesn't clog (I don't care if a little bit of CC ends up in the trash bucket).

 

Similar to this, only the end is longer

 

Yeah something with a hand pump seems like it would work better.

 

I assumed most people clean their CC when performing a WC (for those that manually clean their CC).

 

And I'm suggesting that is a bad idea. It is a better idea to have a strong CuC to take care of it.

 

I don't disagree. What does your CUC consist of? In what size tank?

Mine isn't very extensive and the lsit is in my sig. My favorite member is my red legged hermit which is getting huge....I love watching him/her at work. This weekend I think I will get 4 more.

 

John at Reefcleaners put it together for me.

I have a 55 g.

I have ~200 snails of about 6 different species.

• Majority are dwarf ceriths
• Lots of Nerites of various size
• About a dozen FL Ceriths
• Chitons (though I only recommend these for mature tanks)
• Nassarius snails (for the meat)
• Dwarf Planaxis (for getting up into the rockwork).

In the past 2 years, I've placed one extra order to supplement with additional snails after I got rid of the hermits (who had eaten most of my FL Ceriths too)

The Dwarf and FL Ceriths are the ones that mostly clean my CC. I also use 'do not overfeed' to keep the cc clean

I used to have about a dozen blue legged hermits which also did a fantastic job on the CC... but I got sick of them stealing meat from my corals so I tossed them. Actually, I boiled them and tried a tail :-X It is not like crawfish. Anyway, that's what I have.

 

LOL that's nasty. My blue-legged hermits try to steal frozen goods from my rics and polyps when I target feed them. My red-legged hermit keeps to himself or just eats what may fall on the ground from non-target feeding.