Advice on Nitrate/Phosphate problems
 

In the past two months (maybe more), i have problems with nitrate and phosphate levels in my 90g reef tank. Phosphate levels have ranged from 0.5 - 2.5 ppm and nitrates have ranged from 10 - 25 ppm. I am at my wits end trying to bring the levels down. I have tried nitrate and phosphate sponges with limited success (phosphates dropped for a little while, but returned). I have done two large scale (>20g) water changes recently with no success. I have also cleaned out my sump and i clean out the foam filters bi-weekly.

Deionized water and salt mix have shown negligible levels of both anions. I feed the tank freezedried bloodworm and mysis shrimp (washed before addition to tank). I will also feed flake food (prime reef, cyclopeeze flakes). Over feeding shouldn't be a problem as i only feed every second day if i remember. I give phytoplex (2 capfulls) 1-2 week.

Can anyone suggest any alternatives to getting those levels back to a healthy range? What other sources of phosphate and nitrate could be introduced accidently?

Thanks

From what I've heard bloodworms are always packed full of nutirents and I haven't heard of too many people using them. Same goes for mysis but not as much. You might want to try feeding more cyclopeeze and flake or pellet food more often and using mysis as a treat.

Also for phosphate, a phosban reactor works very well and is relatively inexpensive.

For Nitrate there's been a few people using a 5 or 10G sealed bucket almost full to the top with unused aragonite. Leave about 2 or three inches for water to pass over the sand. Pump some water from your sump or tank into the top few inches of one side of the bucket and out the other side back into the sump with enough flow to ensure nothing is going to settle on the sand like detritus. From what I've read this works like a charm. The sand soaks up all the nitrate and works very well as a pH buffer too. Change the sand when the you notice your nitrate going up again. I think it lasts a long time though. There's a thread on Canreef about this. I'll try and find it for you.

Just straight up ditch the foam.

Just to play devils advocate...

Sugar.

LOL!

Any luck on finding the link??? both my tanks, 75G & 20 G are high in nitrates too

doesnt the foam work as a bubble trap?

If you have a lot of spare time you can read this http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...5&pagenumber=1 My next tank will have a sandbed filter similar to these, only bigger.

Just from my experience, 6 out of 10 people who start with a sandbed will quit their tank before a year has elapsed.

Well I didn't quit and still have one tank (230g) with a deep sand bed.......but if I had to do it all over again I wouldn't have one. All my other tanks are BB and I will probably eventually remove the sand from the 230g.
Sand and foam are evil. Every tank I have ever had a foam in has had high nitrates - remove the foam and the nitrates fell. Even though I was rinsing the heck out of the foam every week or even 2 times a week I still stuggled with nitrates. Not that they have totally disappeared but at least they are managable with water changes twice a month.

Nitrates
 

I have found and heard from others that reef roids will increase you nitrates if used too often. Not sure if you use this or not but just a thought. Also like Albert mentioned , removing all sponge will help. You could replace the sponge with other media like a filter sock with some phosban or something like that for a few days every other week.

Cheers,

Sammy

What is wrong with sand?

Over time sand seems to have a tendancy to collect a lot of detrious (sp). There have been a quite a few (long) threads on it on various boards. Once the sand reaches it's carrying capacity it has a tendency to crash or release all those toxins back into the tank. I am not sure on all the technical aspects of it I just know that my BB tanks appear to be heathier than my DSB tank.

I've read a few of those threads. They seems to be the sandheads squaring off against the the bearbottomites. Nothing conclusive ever seems to come out of them.

6/10 People with sand beds quit? So whats the percentage of bare bottom who quit - bet it's about the same. Sandbed has little/nothing to do with people quitting. Contrary to the Pro BB sect's belief.

LOL. Nothing polarizes this hobby (affliction?) like like sand or lighting.

HeHe or powerheads or skimmers or or or.......... It's funny. I think that lots of different things and methods work. I have my preferred and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I try to read and make informed decisions but then you go and look at someone's tank that does like 2 water changes a year - in a good year - and they have a beautiful tank while I am struggling with nitrates or heat or phosphate. Man go figure.

Wrong.

I keep track Andy. None of my barebottom customers have quit. We're talking the last two years here.

I don't just whip random sh1t out of my a$$ and try to pass it off as fact.

I'd love to see the names - cuz honestly I doubt that - as the drop out rate in this hobby is very high - BB or SB isn't going to make a difference.

I don't see why you doubt me.

Wrong

Well thats good to hear Albert......

I'm with you Andy.....

It's not the sandbed I think it's the learning curve once you get into this hobby. You drop a ton of $$ at a store where you hope there info is correct, and acording to them it is. You get home and set up.....now its time for the 17 trips back for odds and ends you forgot or dident know you needed(cant find it all). Then you relize what you have spent and if you have a wife YOUR DEAD...:lol:

Then you change and upgrade to beat the band....:redface: my first tank twice over....:redface:

Then, all the leasons you learn the hard way witch cost you $$$$

Then the wife thing again......:mrgreen:

If you are ever happy with your tank it just means that your planning to buy something BIGGER and BETTER....:wink:

If you get through all of that .......:multi:

And your still married.....:silly: and still have a tank

You get to be one of us that have more than just a screw loose and love this hobby.........

6/10 will quite because they truly don't love the hobby....:cry:


P.S

I don't just whip random sh1t out of my a$$ and try to pass it off as fact.


LMAO

Here's the causation behind my statement:

- Sand bed tanks take two to ten times longer than BB tanks to clean.

- People are not able to keep up with three to five hour a week cleaning routines.

- The tank quality begins to decline and people lose further motivation to work on their tank due to lack of results when they do.

- Cichlids can be pretty damn colorful.

- Wife factor kicks in = quit.

This completely skips the whole nutrient arguement. There's a whole host of reasons for running BB there, but that's a matter of personal aesthetics when you really boil it down.

I suppose the last thing I'll add to this facet of the argument is: How many customers does everyone here have to base their claims on? I have most of Calgary's hobby base.

Sand beds need to be cleaned?? The #1 rule of sand beds is... leave them alone. Let the critters do the work of stiring and cleaning. With enough current nothing will settle on them. Albert, I've read a lot of your posts, and I respect your opinions, but you need do need to chill a bit.

Hmmm? My apologies, I'm not trying to be confrontational, but I also dislike being taken for an idiot.

Anyway, you are 100% correct, but the context is wrong. DSB's should not be disturbed and that assumes that the user has access to real live sand with real sand dwelling organisms:

- Worms from your live rock are not good enough. They are not true sand dwelling organisms and will not overturn the top layers of your sand. That's why the tracks you see in your sand now are the same tracks you're going to see three days, four weeks, six months from now. At this rate, the removal of detritus is a losing battle and the sand WILL reach critical mass and crash your system. I don't know about the rest of Canada, but no one here brings in live sand. It's not profitable and hard to maintain properly in a retail environment without dedicated holding tanks.

- Non-DSB sandbeds do not develope the type of positive anaerobic activity that people are aiming for. They just collect detritus. Again, the above point applies.

- The only form in which I could possibly justify sand is if a person absolutely cannot stand the look of bare bottom. In that case, a thin layer of sand (less than 0.5") is acceptable as long as it's vacuumed regularily (at least once a week) and replaced every six months.

I have a lot of strong opinions, not because I'm belligerant, but because I have accumulated experience and it does me well to pass on that knowledge.

That's the thing, you DON'T GET THESE CRITTERS! Access to animals like burrowing crustaceans and worms is rather... nonexistant in Alberta, probably all of Canada. Hell, I've never seen them for sale in the states, only bristleworm packages. Again, unless you have access to proper live sand to top off a DSB, you're pretty much setting up a time bomb.

1. I don't start my customers with sand. I haven't in almost two years now. If they have sand, it's either because they started under someone else's guidance or they couldn't stand the look of BB. In the latter case, I recommend a super thin sandbed.

2. Anyone who has approached me with problems generally DID NOT touch their sand bed. In those instances, removal of the sandbed WAS the solution. I can't even count the number of times I've heard someone say to me "I'm never going back to sand".

3. As I've insinuated in my other comments, leaving your sandbed alone is NOT a viable option for long term survival of a reef tank. What if you need to move your rock to catch a fish or pick up a piece of coral that's fallen behind your tank? Do you risk crashing your tank each time that happens? I don't think most of us get into this hobby because we need to add another aspect to our gambling addictions.

I knew I was going to get grilled for that one, but what's done is done. I apologize for the remark. But like I've said before, it's in my best interest to keep people in the hobby. I'm not spewing misinformation, nor am I being unreasonable. My explanations were objective and I did provide a counterpoint (thin sandbed).

And yes, I do have the largest SW customer base in Calgary. I don't think anyone is going to deny that.

I'm going to chime in here and shed some light on this situation.

There is definitely an objective reason why people decide to go barebottom. It's probably a moot point to restate all the points that Albert made, but I'll do it anyway for the people that are slow to catch on:

1. This is the most common complaint I hear BEFORE people go BB. "The sandbed is a bitch to clean because of the detritus."
The reason this is first and foremost the single most important key point as to why people remove sandbeds.The accumulation of detritus is extremely high for whatever reason; fish waste, rock detritus. A barebottom 33g tank can have its waste siphoned in roughly a minute. The lack of sandbed allows all waste to gather into dead spots which make it relatively easy to remove.

2. You cannot easily remove as much detritus from a sandbed, unless you spend extreme amounts of time making sure the substrate is clean.

3. Since there are no small critters in your sand to do what you THINK they should be doing, the sandbed essentially becomes a nutrient sink.

4. In juxtaposition to #3, detritus can accumulate much more easily and crash a tank.

Names don't matter that much. So what if I rattle a list of 10 or 20 people that will never go back to using a sandbed?

By the way medican, the learning curve is correlated with the decisions you make within the hobby. It's a question of practicality v.s aesthetics. Since there are is no real live sand with real sand dwelling organisms, the question of beneficial nutrients is irrelevant. Sand just provides another form of denitrification, of which there already is enough in the LR.

Yeah, because people that don't enjoy chores hate their homes.

Well chime you did.....
Since you might as well of cut and paste Albert, thanks for your thought.

Going on and on.......

well maybe but if you had read the posts before it was stated that the sand bed and the hassle they cause is one of the reasons people get out of the hobby. I would say that’s not true and stated why I thought people left the hobby. It's just my opinion, but once again thanks for your thought.

Your right, if your not going to use a sand bed for what its ment for then BB is the way to go. I would say .5 to 1in is a waist of time and I wouldn’t have the time to clean it either.

In your post 1 is stating the same as 2,4 we can put in there too.

LMAO.....#3 I think the only SLOW one out there is YOU.........the rest of the people on here I don’t think would take kindly to being called that.

Sand beds when used properly(not cleaned) once they have matured(I ment the sand bed), play an essential roll in the cycle of a reef tank.
IMO a true reef tank should be able to take care of its own waist products with little or no help from us.

By the way a learning curve is about learning NOT decisions.

Nobody said anything about beneficial nutrients in a sand bed.

What do you think creates a denitrification prosess in the sand bed.

Even Albert has stated there is not enough in live rock...+....its not the same thing. One works on high O2 the other on Low O2.

I'll see your 10 or 20 names and raise you a PH D in micro biology

you might think he goes on and on but in the end you will see pictures of what’s in your sand bed. (If anything you will like the pictures)
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-0...ture/index.php


I think the light you shed is a little dim

Take Care

1- how many people are actually willing to contribute 6+ inches of depth to a sand bed?

2 - Proper sediment size is tricky, again, a direct result of availability of real live sand in Canada.

3 - As Albert stated, what happens when you move rocks around? What about rocks that you have to root deeper within the sandbed for stability?

4 - Ron's article puts a huge amount of emphasis on the non-bacterial organisms in the sand. Organisms that, guess what, I've never seen anywhere in Canada. In fact, the entire second half of the article is devoted to the larger organisms within the sand.

As live rock is concerned, there is a enough anaerobic activity within a tank taht has an average ratio of live rock enough to keep the nitrates within my tank at <1ppm (Salifert).

You should take things into context before hopping onto an argument where some things don't even apply.

Debate
 

Isn't this is kinda a silly debate?
From one perspective, Albert (in his experience as a retailer) believes he has formed a correlation between the people who quit the hobby after they started an aquarium with a sandbed and the people who remain in the hobby after they started an aquarium with barebottom.
From another perspective, Richard (medican) doesn't believe Albert.

So......... point taken.

there is a definite correlation between a learning curve and decisions you do make because if it didn't, then you didn't learn anything.

I'm too new to sw to have a valid opinion on the benefits/negatives of sand. But I had Discus for years and the same bb vs. substrate argument raged although there were different aspects to it. One thing that was always said was that removing the sand would cause a catastrophe, and that's been said here too. I disproved that here when I removed all sand/substrate from my planted tank. I had absolutely no problem after removing the substrate. But the reasons I removed it were the same as detailed here... too dirty looking, hard to keep clean, a potential nutrient sink. But that was my opinion of the esthetics, there were never any problems resulting from the substrate. I never experienced all of the supposed pitfalls that sand bottom owners have to fear. My nitrates were very low (cus of the daily w/c I'm sure) and there was no signs of anaerobic activity in the sand... no toxic bubbles coming up from it.

It was a continual battle with me between having sand & getting rid of it. In the end the reason I left the hobby was because of the incessant maintenance required for Discus. Daily w/c of 50% or more, bb being a necessity to maintain a starkly sterile tank etc. So when I flipped to s/w I didn't want to begin with the same attitude. So I've got about 2" of sand in a 65g tank. I don't siphon it, though I may start to if I see crap collecting on it. If it bothers me in the long run I'll just siphon it out like I did with my f/w tank. IMO a bare tank looks out of place and I hope I don't end up there. I've seen mature bb s/w tanks and I don't like them.

I've also owned a LFS and I know that if I told customers that had substrate that as a result of having substrate they should do a lot more mtce on their tanks to alleviate the risks, they might leave the hobby too. On the other hand, if you tell your sand bottomed customers to leave the sand alone and let the tank handle it itself they might be more satisfied. You can bend the reality to fit your own preferences. And statistics can be used to prove anything.

Well what I'd like to know is how many dentists have office aquariums. 4 out of 5? :biggrin:

Cheers:smile:,

Thanks Chin, your absolutly right. Old farts like me that get cranky after 10 should not post after that time,,,,,,:lol:

Dave I think you hit the nail on the head, well said......

I wonder if anyone has done a side by side test of BB vers. sand. Start 2 identical tanks side by side, one with sand, one without, and see what happens over time. So far I have only seen speculation. Another experiment would be to wrap a small peice of shrimp in mesh and bury it 1/2" below the surface of the sand. In a week or so dig it up. If it's empty the sandbed is working, if the shrimp is still there (in any form) then it could be said detritus can collect in a sand bed :wink:

It's not even about nutrients, it's about ease of maintanance. I won't argue about the merits of a proper DSB, but the whole concept is moot since there's no actual means to do one properly in my area.

Anyway, I just wanted to clarify why I'm such an advocate of BB:

- Maintanance time is cut down significantly. I spend twenty minutes a week on a 130 and it looks pristine. I've lost a lot of people to the time demands that a substrate places on them. Again, I don't buy into the leave it be philosophy on non-DSB set ups; once you've dealt with the numbers of people I have, you wouldn't either.

- Massive flow becomes a viable option. This is self explanatory.

- Advances in skimming and aggressive nutrient control (Phosban reactors, Zeovit, Sulphur denitrators, etc) have paved the way for substrate-free stability.

- I like the look of BB. Yes, you read that right, I like the sterile look. It's the same kind of aesthetics sense that makes me prefer cityscapes over mountain vistas.

Anyway, I'm like five minutes late for work. Later guys.

If I may use your post as a quote.

Where does the detritus go in an aquarium with a sandbed. I have had some very nice tanks with dsb,s but never long enough to qualify an answer for long term use. I now run bare and the amout of detritus build up is unbelievable, as many that have gone that route have suggested.

Most of bare bottomed tanks run more current than dsb tanks, so keeping it in suspension is not the question. I have had near everything available to "keep the sand clean", in some of my tanks. I never did then nor do I now understand how they keep the bed clean. Even believe even Ron suggested they have a limited life and should be partially removed & replaced at times, the same as our live rock.

I disagree that sandbeds are more work, if anything they are less work. What they are, is more $$$$$$$$, both for the sand & the critters needed to "keep them clean". My bare bottomed tank andmost others I know, need detrius siphoning nearly every water change, something I never did with a dsb.

I did like the look of my dsb,s despite their taking up of 4 inches of my tank and I liked many of the creatures I kept to clean it. But when I see the crap that comes from my tank & some of my older rock now, I just shake my head thinking of where it all went before.

Having said all of that, I did some followup reading on RC and decided to buy some starboard and go bb on the 225g tank. I just know that watching the sand load up with crap will drive me nuts in the long run. This way I'll have the 65g tank with sand and the 225g without and I'll be able to make a educated comparison. Funny enough, the cost of the starboard including shipping & exchange was almost exactly what I was going to spend on the sand.

Go
 

Doesn't it just dissolve into the water column, then gets removed by water changes and skimmers? That was always my understanding, coming from my freshwater experiences (minus the skimmer part, of course). Once I got into planted tanks, I quit siphoning the substrate completely. I never had a problem.

My nano tank has been running for a year with a 1.5 - 2" sand bed that I've never siphoned. I've never had nitrates register yet. Granted, a year isn't a long time, and such a small tank makes it easy to do weekly 15% water changes (that's total volume, not actual volume after accounting for whatever is taking up room in the tank). Also, I quite like the look of the colourful layers in the substrate. I guess this is the crap that drives some people nuts. :lol:

At any rate, with my new 24 G tank almost set up, I've decided to go with under 1" of fresh aragonite in all three of my tanks. Hopefully nassarius snails will do a sufficient job rooting through the substrate.
________
Ipad cases

Its the detritus that settles and build in piles where the current cant keep it suspended. I would say the organics would be in the water and removed by skimming ,{which also removes visable detritus}, and water changes.

I never had a nitrate problem with a dsb, as its excellent at denitrification. Its the build up of phosphates in the sandbed, as in detritus piles in barebottem, or in the sumps or in partical filters, like filter wool or the socks used now. Thats why they need cleaning on a regular basis.

It should also be noted, although I run bare now, :lol: {sounded funny}, I still see nothing wrong with running a shallow or dsb if one wishes. Its just that they also require maintance to keep them functioning correctly and not just a bunch of costly items from an lfs.

Here's how I keep my DSB fresh.... Engineer Goby, Brittle Stars, Sand Sifting stars, Sand sifting snails and about 30 or 40 Cerith snails... I have no phosphates... nitrates down to <10ppm with the help of my biodenitrator, and not a spec of algae to be seen anymore... Christy will attest to that... Corraline is growing almost TOO much... and I finally have good polyp extension AND growth... And I feed what most of you would deem as too much... my fish are fat and healthy... Oh and did I mention that I'm getting some of the most spectacular colours I have seen?

DSB or BB is a difference in philosophy and approaches... there is no ONE way to do things in this hobby. Yes I would agree that DSB is more work and more $$$, but I love the look, and the animals that live in the bed... they make the whole ecosystem more interesting and like nature IMHO.

I am in the midst of setting up a 37g frag tank that will be BB just for the maintenance aspect, so it's not that I'm not open minded. Just a matter of preference IMO...