Detritus supports trillions of competing bad bacteria when it's locked in a normal sandbed, ie every sandbed here just not yours/yours is aerated much better and pathogens seek the other zone where h sulfide is present as a tank killer in many documented cases. Yours still fosters oxygen-competing bacteria on the non smelly detritus, its just been established thats a legit food source adjunct for the other stuff you feed if someone wants to add it.
Gotta upvote elegance from the housecleaning perspective.
It's my offer /guessumption after working with bacteria for a living for a while in the past that the collective loading microbially from a classic sandbed outpaces oxygen command of all the fish totaled, detritus loading has a measurable impact depending on location, duration of buildup and other factors, am only saying it becomes a risk somewhere on the continuum though it doesn't start that way. There is no continuum for cleaning, I like how it can't be overdone when the ordered steps are ran. I know Scott works in a lab too and we disagreed over BOD impact but that's my stance based on what I saw.
its still testable by the way, why doesn't someone here run a dredge test, drum up your deepest best feedmud, decant it into a cup of pure concentration, let sit for 5 days stir it twice a day or even better aerate bubble it, then give us nitrate readings starting at day 3 post the uptrending
test your skimmate just the same, day 1 nitrate test vs day 5 after stirring. mini bod assessments (o2 is inferred not directly tested here though that's avail for reefing too_) make the samples concentrated, decant multiple samples by pouring off the topwater after timesettling, then mix the finals together for the test.
You guys have the ability to measure the collective nutrient contributions of detritus and it'll show trending if the samples are concentrated, to mimic the effects of time and compounding.
every cleaning interval is more months added to lifetime, do a thousand of them, that's a thousand biological lifepan increments + hedging against all the unpredictable things that happens to old reefs over the years.
On that same note, same amount of sand but clean grains or partially loaded grains is measurably, impactfully less oxygen commands. This is garnered from many BOD samples ran from pig and cow wastewater plant work late 90s. The legal limits of poo sets the rate at which your line can produce, # carcasses per hour, so packing in maximum possible waste to a water table was what I focused on intently. Each sample literally had altered amounts of organic loading mixed into the sample so we could tell how certain parameters changed over time:
nitrate
oxygen
co2
methane
other gases
oxygen commanding bacteria
pathogens
nitrifiers
aerobes general
all the goodies we have to make offsets for when detritus is aged, and packed up, in the non aerated common reef tank sandbed.
We are getting a lot more than just helpful carbon with every ounce of poo, for sure.
In any power outage prone area, a high detritus balance can kill while all along little Mason jars packed with lps and sps and only clean grains can sit still probably two or three weeks straight, due to not farming competition.
still agree that perfectly running tanks on detritus are fine, they're just totally weak compared to a mason jar reef under any form of stress and that irony is awesome, rule makers would've said more gallonage was safer. no, the clean condition is safer if any form of stress is expected where the reef sits.
I used to work in a four acre lake of detritus sludge, what wafts around a reef tank seems tame but only if one isn't having to access its depths for one reason or another. It is great feed, substrate for diverse animals, when kept in balance by location/stratification if any and dilution + other offsets. just riffing on the bacteria part, its a fact. Detritus is collective bioloading just as a fish swims around as bioload/id rather be entertained by the items that tax my system and keep the feed in the freezer but that's just my way.
