dsb?

[liegeofinveracity]

hi all, i have been doing a boatload of reading about the deep sand bed concept and have to admit, i don't find myself any wiser than before anyone here used or using one? if so would you do it again?

[Frizza]

I would use a DSB in a sump/fuge but not in my main display. I think ideally I would have it remote so that if there are any problems then it can be easily detached from the system, it would generally work like an external canister filter.
I don't know how effective they are, my fuge has a DSB and my nitrates are at a reasonable level, now whether that has anything to do with the DSB I do not know.

[coral reefer]

I would do it again! With the plethera of living organisms residing in and on the benthic areas of my tanks (IE.sand bed) combined with some of the inhabitants that I have that are so dependent on the food stuff they find while combing the bottom of my tank such as my Sea Cucumber and Conch, it makes perfect sense for me to have a deep sand bed with great long term results as I have been receiving!

[Tangster]

Originally Posted by liegeofinveracity

hi all, i have been doing a boatload of reading about the deep sand bed concept and have to admit, i don't find myself any wiser than before anyone here used or using one? if so would you do it again?

First off you have to consider why you would use one in the system and what are the expected benefit's from it on your part ? And then the last thing is you have to understand that to this day not a single soul has ever been able to explain to me where all the DOC's wind up at in these little glass boxes of saltwater ? At the end of the Carbon chain their is always a sludge.. Not to say some do not get away with running a DSB for a few yrs But its with lots of work and maintenance . Plus the semi to annual replenishing of the wonderful sand fauna.

This is what I was telling them in the mid 90's when this bad idea was trotted back out again.. All I got was ooohhhhh never the sand bugs will totally self regenerate themselves ! LOL then guess what peoples sand started to cap and harden and then first thing was will rake it to keep it from setting up Bad Idea ! then it was add some sand sifters to keep it open and loose LOL Again a Bad Idea the sand sifters are just eating what you do not have enough of already as the sand is setting up. Then it was Oh well you have to replenish the sand fauna every yr then it went to 6 months !

There is a laundry list of things that go wrong and what will cause the problems But at the end of the day I still say sooner or later all septic tanks need to be pumped out .. At least with a Plenum you can achieve that and remove the bio sludge every yr or so as needed when the alga's start to take over the nutrient rich sand

[liegeofinveracity]

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!