Advice on Nitrate/Phosphate problems

[Reefer Rob]

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.

[albert_dao]

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

[Ruth]

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.

[Sammy]

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

[Reefer Rob]

What is wrong with sand?

[Ruth]

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.

[Reefer Rob]

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.