Green algae blanket. That’s the only way to describe what was building on the sand in my display. I tried siphoning, some chemical dosing, but in the end it would always come back in a couple weeks.
I figured it was finally time to start fighting fire with fire, so I went to the LFS and picked up a diamond goby. I’d had a couple of these before (at different times) but they had a tenancy to not do so well in my tank. Not sure if it was the size of the tank, if they weren’t getting enough food or what. I looked into a couple of other options to get more sand turnover (engineer gobies, dragon goby, more nasarius snails) but in the end this little guy was cost effective and a fun addition to the tank.
After a 45 minute drip acclimation, I turned him loose. Shortly there after, the sand storm began. I’m guessing I just had an OBSCENE amount of junk in my sand, but the more he sifted the worse the storm got. I ended up doing 10% water changes every other day for a week – and finally the storm started to settle.
No that he’s settled in, and the cloud has subsided, things are looking MUCH better. My sand is looking clean and healthy again and he continues to pound out some serious turnover!
