I was wondering whether or not anyone in here can help me decipher what is going on with my aquarium……

Lately I have been having a nitrAte problem (I just bought a product called Algone which is supposed to be a natural remedy for this, so I won‘t have to keep breaking my back weekly by doing non-stop massive water changes).

Well, speaking of those water changes, last week, I ended up needing to change 100% (slowly) of the water in my 29 gal. Tank. My gravel ended up being super clean by the time I was done.

Now, this did not harm the bacteria colony (thank God), but it did do something rather odd. Today, I was cleaning my aquarium again and in the water bucket noticed what looked like sand. I have never had any sand in this aquarium, so I pinched some and pulled it out. It was white and each piece was bigger than a normal grain of sand.

Where do you think this might have come from? At fist I thought that it could be parasite eggs, but I tried to pinch one in between two of my fingernails and it wouldn’t bust--it just shot out from between my nails and smacked me in the cheek….

I know I’m really being a worried-wart here. But any SLIGHT changes in my tanks have been freaking me out lately since this nitrAte business began. I guess I just want some assurance----Do you think it could be a BUNCH of broken bits of gravel? But, still, if so, why hasn’t it happened before now?

Does gravel break down after so long and become sand like? Maybe that's what has happened.

As Queenie has stated, gravel breaks down into smaller pieces. It is the way that sand is created.

If you do not have gravel in the tank, do you have white sintered glass or ceramic cylindars in your media basket? They break down into smaller pieces, and are white. They could make up the "sand".

Have you any larger stones in your tank? Often, included in a "pocket" in a stone, there will be a small collection of sand or small pebbles caught in a clump. Something such as this could release an amount of sand.

Do you have any decorations that are molded from rocks? Some decorations are made by molding sand into a form - they are comprised of compressed sand that is held together with an adhesive. THey could be "shedding" sand particles - particularly from the bottom.

That is all I can think of at the moment................