[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by AJ_77

Victor, are sandbeds crashing in 6 months now?

it seams from almost every one I have seen laitly that they start to do minor crashes at aprox 1 year. I don't meen a total devistation type crash but rather if you look at posts and such you will see that people start developing turf/hair/other type of algae problems. while most of these present them selves as nussences that seam to come and go it just seams to much of a coincidence to me as the majority of people developing these problems also have DSBs.

Also the frequency seams to be partialy tied to the average amount fed to the tank. now I know I did do some heavy feeding on my tank myself but my phosphate/nitrate/ect levels were always perfect.

This has led me to my theory that a DSB will adsorb this stuff but it only has a certian rate of intake. now this intake can be super charged for short periods of time in which there will be a unusaly high amount of nutrents in the top layer of the sand. once the top layer becomes saturated the rate of intake will slow allowing algae growth to start. then from time to time something or some one will disturb that saturate top layer after which the sand bed will releases the excess nutrents that it is storing in the top layer at that moment. this leads to algae problems and such and it is done in such a matter that the slow prerelease of nutrents allows a good algae base to grow then when the major nutrents are released by some stiring of the surface level they are adsorbed by the algae almost as fast as they are releases by the sand bed. this explains why so many people who have DSBs and algae problems still have very good water quality levels.

anyways this is my theory and it could be totaly wrong but it makes sence to me.

Steve