Sand bed

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by DJKoop

The only reason I have brought up the plenum line of things is Geothermal Aquaculture Research Foundation has lots of tanks and nearly all of them run with the plenum/sand bed and lots are over 5 years old and doing great. They do more research and fraging than anything else. I have found this place to be a great source of info. Fragging videos, and more. It's just that I've never heard of them ever having a problem and the tanks look absolutely amazing. I've never seen tanks stuffed so solid with corals before. And all growing like mad.

That's all in the eye of the beholder. See what the Europeans think of the GARF tanks and... Well, no, ask for yourself:

http://www.reefitalia.net/forums/index.php?

There's a few over there who speak English.

In contrast:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...hreadid=971190

As far as I can tell, none of those tanks incorporate plenums and most use some form of probiotic (prodibio, zeovit, etc) or chemical filtration (carbon, phosphate reactors, etc) to keep their tanks low nutrient. Those methods are philosophically antithetic to those of DSB/plenum flavor; however, they will support substrate.

Anyway, like I said, it's all subjective. I'm sure the GARF method works, but they have access to live substrate. That's a pretty BIG advantage over us folks here.

As far as their knowledge base and experience goes, well, my opinion is beyond the scope of this post, but you'll find some pretty mixed reviews over on RC.

Drat, I should be doing homework, LOL!