Sand bed binding????

[Troy F]

Ron's mentioned that in more places than a conversation but it's still only one possibility. The rest of what is mentioned above are all valid as well.

[Delphinus]

In four years of reefkeeping so far, I've never had problems with substrate clumping until I tried being serious about maintaining simulatenous high alkalinities and high calcium. Don't get me wrong, in general I hang off every word of Dr. Ron, and that's an interesting theory about the bacterial clumping, I don't disbeleive it for second; but, I beleive my experience does support validity to the other opinions as well.

To be certain, it is good to maintain a good population of sand stirrers. I would like to try one of these tiger tail cukes some day. Anybody know how big they get?

[ 28 September 2002, 19:49: Message edited by: delphinus ]

[TimT]

Tiger tail cucs get up to 2 metres. The biggest I have seen is 17".

Trivia: Some people squeeze the gut out, dry them and eat it. It's called Beche de mer.

Cheers,
Tim

[StirCrazy]

Originally posted by Clam man:
Trivia: Some people squeeze the gut out, dry them and eat it. It's called Beche de mer.

Cheers,
Tim

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">eww are you sure it is the guts Tim, I have eaten local cucumbers and we threw out the guts and kept the 4 strips of mussels that are inside them. they are realy realy good saute'ed in garlic and butter.

Steve

[TimT]

Sorry to scare you heh heh heh. [img]tongue.gif[/img] I should have written it differently.

They throw out the guts and dry the rest. That is what I originally meant.

Cheers,
Tim

[canadawest]

I have two Tiger-tail cukes in my tank, one is about 6" long and the other about 8" long. I have had them for just over a year now. They are slow growers, perhaps 2-3" per year.

Try to find a smaller one (less than 6") and you'll have it for a long time before it grows overly large. Even if it did get to 18", it still wouldn't be any trouble in your tank as they stay down on the sandbed, come out only at night, and are tireless workers. Nice looking too!

[Harald]

I have both a 7" Tiger tail and a 2" Fighting conch. My cuke was 4" when I bought it a couple of months ago, it's incredible how much it's grown in the time I've had it. Somewhere in my tank I also have a brittle star, even though I haven't seen him since I put him in.

I haven't had any problems with clumping in my DSB. But I used 50 kg of play sand and only 15 kg of aragonite. My DSB is working great, and I was able to remove my skimmer almost a month ago. My water is staying crystal clear, and I have one less thing sitting in the tank (more room for fish [img]smile.gif[/img] ).