Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Quagmire
I remember reading that also,he was talking about the size of the sand bed needing to be large enough to support all the organizms to brake down detrius from the first step right through the Nitrification/Denitrifacation cycle.But even a small sand bed will help take nitrates out of the water,provided its the correct depth and grain size.But it needs to be kept clean.Or it adds to the Nitrate problem,rather than helping with it.
|
Correct, it would help with the nitrates by making those oxygen deprived areas. But, his concern was that such a small square footage of sandbed would eventualy become stagnant because it does not support enough life to clean up the bed. Hence the DSB crashes (for smaller tanks)
In short form:
Nitrate sink yes - but cannot export ditritus properly and becomes saturated causing a ton of issues.
Sand in a bucket for a nitrate sink has been passed around lately. But you need to move the water across the bed fast enough so that it does not let ditritus settle. Otherwise you would have the same issue as the small DSB sized tanks.