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What ever you may think, the ceramic media had nothing to do with your problems and are the most efficient substrate for the nitrifying bacteria.
However, there are many ways to care for and filter an aquarium so whatever method you prefer is fine as long as it works.

I used a large Eheim Canister filter and large wet/dry filter in my 125 gal Coral reef tank but I changed 50% of my water each week. That was the easiest way to keep the nitrates low. I only had LPS Corals like 3 Elegant, Hammer, several whitwe Bubble and some similar. had to keep them spaced widely apart. and various soft polyp corals. I had this set up for 6 years but it was long before the interest and expertise in raising SPS Corals had become perfected. I would use entirely different filtration and lighting now. I had 6-72 inch VHO fluorescents, half actinic and half 10K lamps.
I had Yellowtail Blue Damsels, Mandarin Dragonettes and Pygmy Hawaiian Flame Angels breeding regularly in my tank so my water quality must have been pretty good.
I kept few fish for a 125 gal so the Manadarins had all the copepods they needed to stay healthy enough to breed. Al the fish except the Damsels would breed at dusk after lights out. The damsels bred much like small Cichlids, every week for 6 months at a time.
I had a Ctenochaetus strigosus Tang as my resident algae eater(Reef tank equivalent of a bushy Nose pleco), and six Fire gobies(A necessity in every reef tank I've ever kept), just love these little guys. As are some red stripe cleaner shrimp.

Just had to laugh about aquaclear....I' try to use AC's in all of my tanks if that's possible! Love em myself- but not so crazy about canister filters myself but some tank setups I cannot have a HOB on.


? about the sand.... is there so many different types of grain size in the sand or is it all uniform looking? is there a black tint to it when you see on bottom of the tank? When you're moving things around as you mentioned you rarely touch the sand do you see pockets of bubbles coming out of the sand when you poke into the sand? I agree with adding a great looking sword plant.

I think the AquaClear is the best value for an inexpensive HOB filter.
It is an honest design. I detest the HOB filters that require you to buy their custom cartridges.
Those cost so much to maintain over their operational lifetime you can easily buy a quality canister filter for what you will spend on the filter and years of replacement cartridges.
The AquaClear filters may be set up with a variety of media but I keep the ceramic and sponge media but do not use the carbon packet. Carbon is not necessary for routine aquarium conditions.
I cut a couple strips of that blue bonded filter material and insert it first, then the sponge and finally the ceramic media.
One can greatly extend the periods between cleaning in a couple of ways.
For a typical tank, I make a prefilter out of a clear plastic jar wit a white plastic lid and drill 80 or so 1/8" holes all around the sides of the clear plastic jar, 2-1/2 X 6 inches and drill a hole just large enough in the center of the lid to fit snugly over the filter intake tube and still use the tapered slotted intake. You can buy extension tubes if you want the intake closer to the bottom.
Then I cut a strip of the blue bonded filter pad 6 X 12 inches and wrap that around the intake tube, blue side facing out after the tube has been inserted into the plastic jar lid. Then screw the lid back on with the filter pad inside the jar. This adds a very large area of prefiltration and removed the majority of the dirt from the water. You can just take the pre-filter assembly off the intake tube and leave the main filter in place. This blue bonded filter material is easily rinsed clean and reused for years. Then every few months do a full filter system cleaning but you will find the layer of blue filter pad, sponge and bio-media are still very clean.

If you use the AquaClear filter on a tank used for raising ornamental shrimp or fry a different pre-filter design is better. This one prevents sucking in small shrimp or fry and also extends the time needed between clean by months but not quite as long as the first design which is better for community tanks.
The second pre-filter design is simply a filter media bag stuffed with the springy, green coarse filter fiber material from Eheim called Ehfifix. Just fill the media bag(3 X 8 inch bag works well) with Ehfifix; shove the slotted intake tube into the center of the mass of Efifx inside the bag then simply attach the bag around the intake tube with a rubber band or two. This type of pre-filter is really nice if you are raising shrimp as the media bag is fine enough to protect newly hatch shrimp and shrimp or fry can feed directly off the surface of the media bag where fine bits of food tend to accumulate but the suction is spread over so much surface area that the baby shrimp or fry are in no danger of being sucked tight to the bag.
Many people I have shared this pre-filter design with have reported extremely enhanced shrimp production.
I use this design in my permanent Corydoras hastatus colonies which also normally contain Cherry shrimp.

It is hard to beat the value and utility of the AquaClear Design. Carbon is a generally unnecessary media to use. It is mainly useful when you have a medication or unwanted leaching of tannins from new bog wood that you wish to remove so your water is cleaned of any residual medication or you want to diminish the "black water" leach tannins can cause when the wood is new.