thanks for the responses guys.i guess the debate rages on! my idea was to get sand from the atlantic{i live in northeastern mass.} right off the coast as its about a five minute trip for me to the water, now this is a risky idea for a lot of reasons and i'd be surprised if anything living in said sand was to survive the elevated temp of my tank anyhow,but last weekend i changed out 8 gallons or so in my 29 gallon tank with water from the ocean(had to raise the sg a bit, it was at 1.01
and the immediate change in my filter feeding animals and even my condylactis was impressive to say the least, they act like different animals all together even after a week,not that they were doing poorly before,quite the opposite,wich to me made it even more impressive{more natural food perhaps?},anyways,,,back to the dsb, there would be no plenum as that seems like a bad idea to me,and from my studying the only really informative thing i found(as far as long term use goes)was that phosphate instead of nitrate becomes the problem, and i strongly suspect that if i found a way to "naturally" remove the phosphate something else would rear it's ugly head,nature of the beast i guess!
