Advice on Nitrate/Phosphate problems

[reeferaddict]

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...

[Moogled]

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.

Originally Posted by medican

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

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

[medican]

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

[Moogled]

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.

The key to the success of such a sand bed community is water movement between the sediment grains. I mentioned above that it is essentially impossible for waves or water currents to move water in sediments. However, there is an exceptionally useful method of generating slow and even water movement through sediments. This water movement is caused by the motion of the animals in the upper inch or so of sand, particularly in those vertically-oriented tube worms such as Phyllochaetopterus, but also by all other animals moving in the upper sediment layers. The amount of water moved by one worm is quite small, on the order of a few fractions of a milliliter per day to a couple of milliliters per hour, but the cumulative total of all the water moved by all the animals in the sand bed is quite considerable. It is enough to push water into and through the sediments.

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).

"By simply setting up a deep sand bed, and then maintaining that bed with the proper diversity and mix of animals, reef aquarists can facilitate the utilization of the necessary excess nutrient resulting from normal feeding."

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

[Chin_Lee]

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.

a learning curve is about learning NOT decisions.

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.

[Dave C]

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.

[Johnny Reefer]

Originally Posted by Dave C

...... 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?

Cheers,

[medican]

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

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

[Reefer Rob]

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