needed Rock ... via Volume, not Lb

There has to be a way to keep the sandbed in check and healthy so you don't have to change it. From what I read the sand sifting snails and craps do a good job.

 

There are ways to extend the lifespan.....siphoning the top layer of sand is the main way. Keeping the bioturbation going with a lot of critters and/or manual stirring is helpful as well.

Eventually, you'll have to pull the bed and clean it. However, most of us change our tanks every couple of years and get to start over.

 

This is where I find it hypocritical then to use Live Rock. It damages the system yet it is claimed to help it out?

Just seems backwards. Why use LR if it helps lead to the destruction of the system?

There has to be some natural way of removing the majority of ditrus(spelling).

 

won't something like this remove it?

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_Display.cfm?siteid=25&pCatId=532&TopCatId=420

 

Ok....lets step back for a second.

Let's start by saying that everything you add to your tank helps lead to the destruction of the system. If it's alive, it is putting detritus into the system. Every fish, every coral, every snail, etc. adds to our bioload into a CLOSED system. Our tanks do not have the equivalent of 100% waterchanges a couple times per day, we don't have periodic upwellings of cooler, lower salinity waters, we don't have hurricanes that occassionally come through and cause a [CTRL][ALT][DELETE] reset of the entire ecosystem.

What does live rock do? It provides a natural setting for fish to hide in, corals to live on, etc. However, the "live" in live rock has nothing to do with the sponges that live on it, the coralline that lives on it, the worms that live in it, the algaes, etc. It's all about the Nitrogen/mineralization cycle. I.e. Nitrifying bacteria that make their home in it. Without them, you couldn't put anything in your tank. Unfortunately, they have a habit of dieing when their life-cycle is over just like us. As a result, the nutrients that were once bound in their body gets added to the bioload. The live bacteria are pushing that out of the LR. What is in this detritus? Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphates just like any other living animal, plant, or human.

This is natural....happens in the ocean too. The main difference is that the ocean is an open system and our tanks are closed systems.

The LR is not removing detritus (just changing it)....that's why protein skimming, chemical filtration with Carbon, Mechanical filtration, etc. is necessary. The LR's main purpose is to house bacteria. Sure the bacteria will attack fish poop, break it down into smaller pieces, and incorporate some of the nutrients into their bodies. However, most of it is not used by the bacterium and no matter how many times I scold my bacteria, I cannot get them to quit dieing and releasing nutrients that were once bound.

As a result, I have a choice. Deal with bacterias bad habits or add absolutely nothing to my tank.

 

The ocean is still a closed circuit, just a very, very large one. A hurricane will only help stir things up, not remove them.

I'm just saying, there has to be a way to get ride of them or a majority of them.

Modifiying a sump at an angle / slant so all the ditrus goes to that corner, then just syphon that out would work.

I'm just sayin, something eats something else's byproducts. I'm just attempting to make an ecosphere so I have to do the least amount of work. I just need to know what that is and how effective they are at it.

 

Yikes....I'm not even going to discuss the abyss nor plate tectonics. Yes, to some degree the ocean is closed but this isn't even comparing apples to oranges. It is comparing apples to a moon rock.

Okay. Lets pretend I landed a spaceship on a planet where there were 10 alien tribes who were dumb as dirt and completelely operated off of instinct. Tribe A's instinct is to take bricks of a specific size, break off 10% of it and put it in their pockets. The remaining 90% of the brick was handed off to the next tribe B who preferred smaller bricks and would also break off 10% of the the brick and put it in their pockets. Etc., etc., and so on. They were accustomed to having boundaries around them at all times and after much trial and error, it was determined that they were quite content in a drained olympic sized inground swimming pool on Earth.

However, they had an instinctive need to break bricks and there were no bricks in the drained pool. Obviously, it was decided to provide them with 2000 lbs of bricks. It takes a while for the bricks to move from one tribe to the next and seasons came and seasons went. They got rained on occassionally and this process dissolved some of the bricks. Small portions of the material in the bricks evaporated with the water.

Finally after a couple of years, each of the 10 tribes has pounded the bricks as far as they can. How many lbs of bricks remain in the swimming pool?

Should I do something to make them empty their pockets or should I find another planet hoping I find something that will break the bricks down further?

 

Whoa I had to read that twice to follow you Curtis. That was wild. Kudos on your earlier posts too.

Hey Clint vacuuming some silt out of a sump shouldn't be much work. I still think a sponge or floss would be easy to trap the stuff and deal with it now and then.

You could always suspend the rock with some egg crate and leave an opening to get a hose underneath to where the silt collects.

Or just use submerged bio-balls instead of rock in your sump or nothing at all other than your skimmer, heater and pump.

 

Thought I read that bioballs were bad. Nitrate factories or something.

Your saying I can reduce the amount of rock I have in my tank if I have Bioballs in my sump / fuge?

 

I was told submerged bioballs host the same bacteria as live rock. So they may actually reduce nitrate. You are basically just submerging a bunch of surface area.