where does it come from?

[Lee Stearns]

Here is a thougt to ponder. Ever blown out your live rock real hard with a turkey baster to see silt and sand come out various crevices far and wide from the point you blasted/ Good porous live rock- must be filtering the water well with all that colonized bacteria. Well turkey baste hard till all you get is clear flow- and then come back a week or two later and you will find the same amount of sediment in there. Where does that stuff come from? Are some type of critter eating away at the rock? Is the sediment from the bacteria having done its job on ammonia? What is the stuff and where does it come from?

[fishface]

I've pretty much given up on figuring that out. And although you are supposed to have enough flow to prevent any serious buildup, you can't aim a powerhead at every rock in the tank.

I have one powerhead near the from of my tank on an extension cord and I use that to blow up a nice cloud of marine snow. I see two camps: Some don't like it at all, others state that their coral trive on it. I don"t know, but I sit in the second camp.

And forget to do it regularly anyway.

[RudyCDX1]

It kinda sounds like flossing your teeth!!!

[craby]

As LR ages it gets clogged & looses it's ability to effectively biologically process waste. One answer is to cook your LR. To cook your LR you shake out the waste in a seperate container & replace SW every time you do a water change over a (4) month period. Essentially this depletes the bacteria's abundant food source & forcing it to delve deeper into the LR to find food. This process opens up the pours in the LR and cleans it. This is kinda hard to do when your LR has corals attached.

Another option is to go BB, turkey baste, let settle & siphon detritous off the bottom glass when you do a water change.