Deep Sand Beds still a thing?

[BZOFIQ]

I can take a shot at silica, although it would just be based on supposition... First, it is cheaper and more available. It does denitrify seemingly just as well, or well enough. Most people do not understand that aragonite will buffer and that the aragonite-phosphate binding is one of the most important one in our tanks. The silica is also rumored to be very hard to reef animals and it acts like a bunch of tiny razor blades like diatomaceous earth in our lungs. Since it does denitrify, this is the "easy" part to understand so it "works." Some think that silica sand will release silica into the tank, but this appears to be another one of those message board urban legends since it does not.

I could see where the cheaper and more available comes into play in places where minimal cost to enter hobby plays a huge role. Thanks again.

 

[Baurochs]

Other poster says only live rock, and while that's the place all of my bristle worms have come from, and I would never pay for a bristle worm, if you start with dead rock and are anal about not letting anything into the tank, your fauna variety will suffer for sure. For those types of people, you can acquire all sorts of goodies from indo pacific sea farms, including bristle worms of the good variety. I'm positive 99.8% of users on this forum have never heard of them, but for us old timers reefing over 20 years, I'm sure the name will be familiar.

: : : : Indo-Pacific Sea Farms : : : :

Indo-Pacific Sea Farms produces captive-bred marine life for healthier reef aquariums: invertebrates, detritivores, live sand, snail grazers, amphipods, beneficial worms, macro algae, plankton, corals, coral food and beneficial bacteria.

www.ipsf.com

yeah I started with dead/cured rock from a tear down aquarium. Ironically there's fauna popping up in my aquarium I have no idea how it got there. Bristleworms just seem to be a unicorn for me. 50$ for 6 bristle worms seems pretty steep, I think I'll ask around to see if anyone in town has any before I'll pull the trigger, probably look into some extras since they have mix n match.

 

[brandon429]

jda


The list of updated options you made is excellent, planning stage and home practice stage are clearly done

if you could find a way to drive/recruit work examples you could really develop new materials and means to expand new ways

Build pages


It’s an invite to try it and forward science in the niche you are good at.

Of course masterful reefers can assemble and maintain a dsb accomplishing the older tenets of natural nitrate reduction, waste disposal in-house but you need a whopper thread of pages to drive home your points. If you can get entrants to agree to the biodiversity portion vs sterility and invest in live rock and sand charging kits, you are bringing a specific variable change to the current standard of everyone’s sandbed just having mud-this has a real chance of working across pages of pattern.

That will forward your science strongly and I believe it can be done with your updated care and balance methods

Sometime in the future it would be ideal to consider any way of getting lots of participants going + update pics over time using the new method, even an assembly of threads across reef forums / they don’t all have to be from rtr, just brainstorming ways of live testing and getting fresh energy back into sandbedding with long term updates / pics in one place.

trying to convey the sheer importance of assessing how well others can replicate a method, especially since the going theme here would be to recommend to all aquarists to start with sand in a reef tank but maintain it a certain way.

I sense lack of downsides being represented but the new positive upsides are strong potential, they just lack pages of refinement we can track for patterns. That is a totally fair request, no harm in asking for thread vetting.
None of the info here or the other thread is bad or wrong, it’s patterns building but they’ll soon stop as the thread dies down


That’s why work threads are different, they have a maestro to keep things going. Your ideas have strong potential, you could run a sandbed work thread to test patterns and you could recruit work across forums, it’s a positive option way to get a ton of free data that’s for sure.

 

[John08007]

I remember 20+ yrs ago people would run a plenium under a dsb in the tank. Some eggcrate covered with embroidery mesh covered with sand. This made a volumn of water under the sand. Taking this idea further could use a 5 gal bucket, put another comtainer inside with holes drilled in it, then covered with gravel. Wouldnt this accomplish the effect of a much larger dsb? Or maybe some of the bio blocks in the bottom of the bucket covered with gravel

 

[shred5]

As I've mentioned in other threads, fundamentally there's just a lot less money involved in a "natural reef aquarium" type system, because after setup with live rock and sand it more or less supports itself with minimal intervention. In contrast, there is big money to be made with things like reef supplements and testing, which means there is a financial interest for both companies and third-party tubers being sponsored to push relatively tech/chemical heavy methods of reef tank management.

I thought about this post when I saw this video was out. I didnt watch it but I bet it is about selling product and not actually learning how to rid it naturally so it does not come back. I could be wrong I didn't watch it.

 

[shred5]

I don't know why, I thought IPSF closed it's doors a while back. I will have to peruse their site and perhaps place an order, although receiving shipments of marine life this time of year in WI is always risky.

As far as using calcite rather than aragonite, it appears that calcite is also calcium carbonate, just with a different crystalline structure, and a little more magnesium. It also binds phosphate.

I think they are still open. I ordered from them not too long ago..
You send them some message on the site and they send a paypal invoice.

 

[shred5]

More bad advice and dogma on the front page in the DSB thread. sigh...

Yea I did not even bother to post in the poll or read the thread. I bet 90 percent of the people who said DSB were bad never even used one and is parroting what they heard. Sad this is the way the hobby is going and it is sad this is the way forums are going just to compete against social media.

 

[brandon429]

Re-aquascaping nightmare!!!!!! Nearly killed all my fish!!!!!

So....yesterday was a true nightmare!!! I decided to re-aquascape my running 300 liter reef tank. I read all the posts here as to how I should do this and organized myself real well- or so I thought.... I knew from all you wonderful people here that I should do this carefully, trying to stir...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

Crickets I’ve noticed

Where’s the commentary about sand safety for pages. This is how sand advice has been going for twenty five years, literally no advisors join the loss threads.


Untested advice kills aquariums, with no accountability

When one person arranges a sandbed and it doesn’t kill the tank, it’s advised everyone do the same.

Clean sandbeds cannot kill the setup, only classic ones kill.

 

[shred5]

Crickets I’ve noticed

Where’s the commentary about sand safety for pages. This is how sand advice has been going for twenty five years, literally no advisors join the loss threads.


Untested advice kills aquariums, with no accountability

When one person arranges a sandbed and it doesn’t kill the tank, it’s advised everyone do the same.

Clean sandbeds cannot kill the setup, only classic ones kill.

First of all nothing died in that tank.
nothing in his post even indicates that his fish were in any danger other than them being scared to death from removal of rock and some hands in the tank. It is his assumption his fish were stressed from the sand bed.

I have seen tangs die from just freight alone.
Some cloudy water and he is assuming that caused his fish to freak out?

That said it is very possible for a deep sand bed to have negative affects if not maintained correctly.

The only thing that thread proves is his water got cloudy. Well duh.. I just tore down a tank and removed rocks form a bare bottom tank.. Well guess what my water was cloudy and my fish were panicking. Matter of fact I lost one fish because he panicked and was dead in a hole in the rock from me trying to catch him and get him out of the hole.

 

[brandon429]

Thank you for chiming in

We collected a few other sand disturbance links and the smell, clouding and loss after access is common

Moving rocks in bare bottom tanks, you can source and post those for us showing smell, cloud and loss

Working with other people's sandbeds produces opposite takeaway than working solely with our own, this thread needed some real life examples of statements from page one about caution and planning in my opinion

Chime in the thread and ask questions/ request a cell video drop test of sand to see if more disturbance helps or hinders, you can work to discover in that tank if the rock arrangement was the issue but I don’t think they can be convinced to disturb more sand.

If they would make a new drop test we can easily see if the clouding comes back

If that tank was in our rinse thread we would be cleaning the hound out of it to make it safe for future access

changing up the fish balance at the start to include sandbed turning ones might have been a better preventative step and still allowed them to work around the sand without risk. Diamond gobies appear in pattern threads to make beds safe that really does appear consistently

 

[jda]

This is a false equivalency to me. 3-4 cm is not even what we are talking about. Something else is going on here...

Anybody is not all that smart if they move more than a rock or two at a time that is touching sand, or too much of the bottom. This is hobbyist error and I would not blame a bare bottom, shallow sand bed, deeper sand bed, deep sand bed, or whatever if the hobbyist disturbs too much of the oxic and anoix zones.

 

[ThePlummer]

I'm new here, just found this forum. A short bio then on to the RDSB topic.

Waaaaaay back in the early 90's I tried Marine FOWLER with a custom HOB with wet/dry bio balls and remote sump. Was a very proficient fish killer in a 55gal.

No matter how much water changes I did, could never get Nitrates down. Had all kinds of cyano and hair alga... After two years, gave up.

Fast forward to 2012, my daughters saw my old 55 in the garage all packed up and wanted to know why it was there. I told them my experience in marine fishkeeping. They wanted me to fire the tank up again. I decided to research the heck out of the current technology to see what improvements have been made since my prior attempt.

I found the RDSB thread on Reef Central, and was convinced to try. I made one out of a 5 gallon bucket and new lid, two 3/4 bulkheads, a 3/4 pvc 90 and tee. I drilled two holes in the lid, on opposing sides from each other, attached the 90 inside the lid and then a tee, parallel to the lid. Put 80 lbs. of medium aragonite in the bucket and attached it, in-line between my HOB wet/dry and the sump.

One thing I made sure of was to pre filter the water heavily before it got to the RDSB. Never had any problems with PH, always at 8.4, zero ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates. Tried to grow chaeto, as there was a phosphate issue, but it wouldn't grow (I blame that on horrible grow light that I had). So, I just used Phosband to mitigate that issue.

Never did a water change in three years plus. I had a yellow tang, that when it started to color fade, I'd add Reef Essentials and it would brighten right back up.

Didn't need RO water, as I have good well water with high calcium. Though I did have to add calcium quite often.

After three years, I shut the tank down, as my kids weren't around to enjoy it anymore. Now, I'm firing it back up again... I'm going to do it the same way, because it was so easy. Opened the bucket and checked the Aragonite, very clean and looks ready to go.

I'm also trying an experiment with a 5 gal. nano. 3" of medium Aragonite in the bottom, with one piece of live rock in it and a 16 oz. square plastic bottle with the same aragonite in it, filled to about 3" below the top, standing in the back corner of the tank. I figure it should accommodate a couple of clowns.

I'll update further after the tank cycles, and quarantining for pests is complete.

 

[schooncw]

I'm new here, just found this forum. A short bio then on to the RDSB topic.

Waaaaaay back in the early 90's I tried Marine FOWLER with a custom HOB with wet/dry bio balls and remote sump. Was a very proficient fish killer in a 55gal.

No matter how much water changes I did, could never get Nitrates down. Had all kinds of cyano and hair alga... After two years, gave up.

Fast forward to 2012, my daughters saw my old 55 in the garage all packed up and wanted to know why it was there. I told them my experience in marine fishkeeping. They wanted me to fire the tank up again. I decided to research the heck out of the current technology to see what improvements have been made since my prior attempt.

I found the RDSB thread on Reef Central, and was convinced to try. I made one out of a 5 gallon bucket and new lid, two 3/4 bulkheads, a 3/4 pvc 90 and tee. I drilled two holes in the lid, on opposing sides from each other, attached the 90 inside the lid and then a tee, parallel to the lid. Put 80 lbs. of medium aragonite in the bucket and attached it, in-line between my HOB wet/dry and the sump.

One thing I made sure of was to pre filter the water heavily before it got to the RDSB. Never had any problems with PH, always at 8.4, zero ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates. Tried to grow chaeto, as there was a phosphate issue, but it wouldn't grow (I blame that on horrible grow light that I had). So, I just used Phosband to mitigate that issue.

Never did a water change in three years plus. I had a yellow tang, that when it started to color fade, I'd add Reef Essentials and it would brighten right back up.

Didn't need RO water, as I have good well water with high calcium. Though I did have to add calcium quite often.

After three years, I shut the tank down, as my kids weren't around to enjoy it anymore. Now, I'm firing it back up again... I'm going to do it the same way, because it was so easy. Opened the bucket and checked the Aragonite, very clean and looks ready to go.

I'm also trying an experiment with a 5 gal. nano. 3" of medium Aragonite in the bottom, with one piece of live rock in it and a 16 oz. square plastic bottle with the same aragonite in it, filled to about 3" below the top, standing in the back corner of the tank. I figure it should accommodate a couple of clowns.

I'll update further after the tank cycles, and quarantining for pests is complete.

Read this before you create the DSB http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-06/rs/feature/index.php

 

[ThePlummer]

Thanks....It's been a while since I've read that one.... I'll favorite it for reference again.

 

[RayDRoot]

I keep a 4in sand bed, but siphon/clean it during weekly water changes. I believe this will help with the time bomb scenario.

 

[ThePlummer]

I keep a 4in sand bed, but siphon/clean it during weekly water changes. I believe this will help with the time bomb scenario.

If you are cleaning all the way to the bottom, It would seem that you are disturbing the anoxic layer, presuming 4" is deep enough to even get there (I assume that probably depends on how fine your sand is, finer grain would be less than a coarse), therefore IMHO defeating a very important reason to have a DSB. This is why I run a Remote DSB, that is heavily prefiltered.

I only keep enough depth of sand for the critters to thrive in, and I'm adjusting that a bit this time. Before I only kept about one inch and had lots of microphauna for a while but it eventually mostly disappeared. I'm doubling the depth this time, hoping to create an environment that will sustain a mandarin without having to constantly replenish them.

 

[Rjramos]

Bob Goeman wrote a pamphlet entitled,“Live Sand Secrets” back in the 90’s, I still have it and can share. It mentions all possible ways to incorporate a sand bed into a system for nitrate reduction. I always wanted to try to set one up but always felt that the 4 inches required for an anoxic area in the sand sediments, and the surface area relative to tank volume was too much to fit underneath in a cabinet. Running just “Berlin Method” ( skimmer and live rock), my tank ended up with terrible hair algae in display. Then years later, I learned about ecosystem aquarium’s method using miracle mud. It made sense to me that a 1” layer of mud, being a finer sediment, would provide the anoxic layer necessary for the right bacteria and would be easier to set up underneath my display than a 4 inch sand bed. I learned about the method and applied it according to their recommendations with regards to sump size and flow through rate. I started some caulerpa macro algae’s rooted in the mud. Within 2 months, a display that was full of GHA for years was free of nitrates and GHA. I still run a mud refugium at 1” depth for many years on multiple systems. It works and doesn’t need the lateral volume of a 4” bed of sand!

 

[ThePlummer]

Bob Goeman wrote a pamphlet entitled,“Live Sand Secrets” back in the 90’s, I still have it and can share. It mentions all possible ways to incorporate a sand bed into a system for nitrate reduction. I always wanted to try to set one up but always felt that the 4 inches required for an anoxic area in the sand sediments, and the surface area relative to tank volume was too much to fit underneath in a cabinet. Running just “Berlin Method” ( skimmer and live rock), my tank ended up with terrible hair algae in display. Then years later, I learned about ecosystem aquarium’s method using miracle mud. It made sense to me that a 1” layer of mud, being a finer sediment, would provide the anoxic layer necessary for the right bacteria and would be easier to set up underneath my display than a 4 inch sand bed. I learned about the method and applied it according to their recommendations with regards to sump size and flow through rate. I started some caulerpa macro algae’s rooted in the mud. Within 2 months, a display that was full of GHA for years was free of nitrates and GHA. I still run a mud refugium at 1” depth for many years on multiple systems. It works and doesn’t need the lateral volume of a 4” bed of sand!

I thought about using mudd also, I ultimately chose the 5 gal. bucket RDSB because it has a benefit of acting like a calcium reactor. I have about 14" of Aragonite in my bucket and the deeper the sand bed, below the anoxic layer, the water actually becomes acidic, causing a small amount of the Aragonite to dissolve into the water column, as I'd always had a problem keeping my Ph high enough. Once the RDSB was online, Ph went to 8.4 and stayed there, no matter what time of day/night I took a reading.

Incidentally, I just checked the Nano tanks ph and amonnia with a piece of live rock that I'm quarantining before seeding my show tank. After one month, Ph is already reading 8.1 from a start of 7.8. So, it seems that the 15 oz plastic bottle with Aragonite is doing it's job.

Now, I'm reading .25 ammonia, down from 4.0 last week. I ghost feed about once a week. Still not showing any nitrite though... But maybe my test fluid may have become out of date. Anyone know if API brand goes bad over time?

 

[sarcophytonIndy]

I am a firm believer in the "chaeto in fuge under a 600W horticulture lamp" method of nutrient reduction. I have to harvest the chaeto at least twice a month, but the display is nuisance algae free.