Detritus is it as bad as some make out?

[Paul B]

Ten years for one of those shrimp globes is fantastic. I would think the shrimp would die of boredom. Very impressive.

 

[hotashes]

i would also add that tiny plant foraging shrimp are part of the ecosystem that’s gone fully eutrophic, but not sps. So they’re inputting the final high order animals that exist when total plant dominance wins. It’s a smart design for sure but even pods live forever in a tank totally racked by cyano, or dinos...

we have to keep on top of export to prevent eutrophication/invasion for the masses

I don’t class detritus as a reef killer at all, it’s just the reason our tank rescue threads get out twenty or more pages. We are cranking out fixed tanks by fixing detritus stores. There’s no way to undo/reverse eutrophication without removing detritus, but there’s ways to bandaid it for a while

The way I see detritus has been framed by watching twenty thousand pico reefs come and go during messaging and threads. Where elbows and nerf balls weren’t the cause of demise, waste and eutrophication came in a close second. I can guarantee and follow though w guarantee that if a new keeper will start and gimme 90 days with a clean sandbed they’ll not be invaded and there sure as heck won’t be a tank-seeding uglies phase. 100% turnout of working micro tanks, detritus removal is rule #1

To store detritus causes variation across the board in your small reef, outcomes after sixty months vary wildly. But to not store detritus streamlines outcomes and it becomes easy to make the system live with no lifespan, as corals should.

Thanks Brandon, just a humble explanation of something clearly dismantling troubled tanks and bringing them and newbies like me to the hobby without having to trawl through plenty of threads with 'I know it all' or 'heroic' comments and just keeping the basics and the $/£ in the pocket

I will happily say that you've helped me, directly and indirectly from the input you've made on these simply threads/discussions I've read. I'm sure anybody would want to join the hobby and begin a journey of research/practice just from the thoughts of keeping things basic and keeping costs to a minimal. I for one, having a nano tank certainly wouldn't want to have all the gimmicks/mod cons here, there and everywhere making my tank become a machine of which we all know, technology comes with a cost. In our realm, failure. Leaving me thinking anything mechanically invasive other than hand guiding my tank will add to the likelihood of failure due to equipment. As you've rightly commented "power cuts" are inevitable and providing we have the basics right our tanks should survive.

Amazed by the treatment of your hand guiding when cleaning your pico there is no remorse in hardcore reefing, of which given time lapse on how long your vase has been upheld I for sure find it impressive.

Having said that, using your very basic techniques with very little spendings and equipment my tank has been running better than I could have imagined, keeping in mind I've no other input locally to me so all actions taken from you. My LPS seems to prevail thus far, even my 1" tridacna maxima is going strong 'touch wood'.

Here's to the hand guiding, detritus removing, lightly sand stirring, and water changes weekly. Oh not forgetting h2o2 treatment on the single occasion (outside of the tank with rock).

Until the next time, rock on...

Ash.

 

[brandon429]

appreciate it much for sure and your feedback is valuable live time information+pics that I can use in my system and future systems to head off challenges

In time reefing evolution will reduce our work loading in nanos demanding longevity and make the work expenditure/you are not going to go eutrophic on my watch because I'll rip clean you mode fully archaic.

until then I'm about to make my sandbed pass another drop test soon and I'll add a kicker of peroxide to the rinse and really flush out the organics.



it’s my opinion every reefer should reef in an absolute resolved and directive manner for about half a year, commanding every phase of the tank to reflect $ investment. The tank does what we say to do biologically and it runs clean during the command approach. An ugly phase means the complete undoing of our entire system

Your bio resolve = respect

your nano is keeping gonis which my tank cannot keep/ jealz!

later on if we try a more relaxed approach and get invaded there’s always the old standby to resolve matters of accumulation. we darn sure won’t be hesitant on the correction mode (cause of all invaded reef tanks) having lived that way as a rule prior.

Detritus physiology is an inextricable dynamic in nano reef science I can’t envision a time it won’t be

 

[Scott Campbell]

Ten years for one of those shrimp globes is fantastic. I would think the shrimp would die of boredom. Very impressive.

There are still two of them. And I believe one is a shrimp supermodel.

 

[Paul B]

I Think she must be. I collect those shrimp by the thousands and most of them jump out when the fish chase them. The rest live until they get bored and jump out. They never really jump out, they kind of stick to the lights.
I am very impressed by your shrimp keeping "skills" even though you really don't have to do anything besides don't boil the thing, still very impressive and I don't get impressed easily except by...Well you know.
Here is a Shrimp about to become a Mother, I hope it was just before Mothers Day.

 

[brandon429]

buddy that's harsh lol that's a jab w no gloves / its all good natured sparring here. Pauls ok by me but I know he could use less of my periphyton hostility. if I lived near the ocean id reef very similarly but it would be not in a square tank by habit.

 

[Paul B]

Sorry Paul, I just don't believe anything you say anymore.

I actually never thought you did.
OMG, I get one of these posts occasionally from a Noob. (Yes you are a Noob to me just like the last time you said the same thing about me) Now what did I say that was so horrible? That I like his shrimp keeping skills, or I collect them and they jump out.
For a guy who doesn't like me or what I post, you seem to read a lot of them. I don't remember saying anything about you because I don't read your threads.

We all know if him and his practices fell off the face of the earth we would all be fine

Well since I am pretty old, we will see soon enough.

 

[brandon429]

That shrimp looks neat it's a lot like the Amano shrimp we use in fw

Ours gets eggs and lays them but with no sw phase the juvi cannot complete so they cannot reproduce. Yours has a strong chance of making it, predation being the challenge as it should be and not the system. That the amano shrimp require marine to breed but can live years in fw is amazing

 

[NY_Caveman]

That shrimp looks neat it's a lot like the Amano shrimp we use in fw

Ours gets eggs and lays them but with no sw phase the juvi cannot complete so they cannot reproduce. Yours has a strong chance of making it, predation being the challenge as it should be and not the system. That the amano shrimp require marine to breed but can live years in fw is amazing

Always kept Amanos in my planted tanks. My favorite freshwater shrimp. Excellent creatures and cleaners.

 

[brandon429]

agreed and they're just so tough. they always ride in to my new tanks and handle the skip cycle work just fine out a few weeks, then for years they cruise. something to watch while waiting for biofilter to catch up

my friend is just sure they're breeding in his planted tank but nothing online says they can skip the required salt phase. all mine are hidden w repost when they come out for comparison, they're really a lot like that one above minus the backround

Plastic plants, check.

 

[Paul B]

I am not sure if you can raise them in a tank. They spawn all the time in my tank in the summer when I collect them and the young hatch and of course in a community tank they get eaten but I think they need a phase to hang out with the plankton for a while and eat diatoms. They are so common that it doesn't make sense to raise them but it would be fun if you could. I could easily fill a 5 gallon bucket with them in one or two pulls with a 2 man net.
Some fish stores here sell them for 10 cents each.

 

[brandon429]

Well in Texas they’d go for nine bucks apiece

So that means you’ve got your bitcoin or we can just go w shrimp dealing as secondary profits



people who are not storing up waste:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/is-a-consistently-clean-sand-bed-an-attainable-goal.403850/page-2

 

[Paul B]

I took a few people out collecting once and they filled their buckets so much with them that by the time we got back to the dock, most of them suffocated.
I should fill a tractor trailer with them and drive to Texas. I would be a Bizallionaire.
This one tide pool has 9,867,591,352 of them and we have a lot of tide pools.

 

[brandon429]

Team

This thread is my best example I have to show invaded sandbed reef owners what caused their invasion + what has sustained it

We link to this thread commonly as prep into fixing invaded reef tanks, we get the cause from this thread, the detritus. We learn about how the passionate advocation of storing detritus and being hands off can only offer 'wait longer' to owners of invaded tanks, open ended cure times. But what they want is closed- ended cure times, so we are setting the stage for action in their threads and no work is done on target without addressing the targets feed and housing source.



Has any advocate of detritus in this thread solved any issue in someone's tank by adding detritus to the invaded system and earned a fix or reversal of the invasion since we talked last here? How have you used your stance on detritus in the last few months to affect another's tank? Link that please

Scott C I'm very interested in seeing any work threads avail

We've cleared a few more invaded tanks by removing detritus since May in the sand rinse thread and posted help threads.




What I'm specifically interested in seeing or knowing is how someone here reshaped or featured their reefing paradigm by work done and collected in any other tank besides their own regarding the impact or nonimpact of stored up reef detritus. It's my claim nobody who documents work done in challenge tanks fails to link detritus as a core causative in all of them.


Since May, the authors posting here or the readers who took away their approaches have either done well with storing detritus or they haven't when working with others reefs, post what you have pls


I'm always pressing for these theory threads to be made into some sort of study-able action...let's see what everyone has done with these notions the last few months

 

[Katrina71]

Shrimp globe? Show me. I think I'd love it.

 

[Sallstrom]

Team

This thread is my best example I have to show invaded sandbed reef owners what caused their invasion + what has sustained it

We link to this thread commonly as prep into fixing invaded reef tanks, we get the cause from this thread, the detritus. We learn about how the passionate advocation of storing detritus and being hands off isn't there to help now that the invasion is full swing.



Has any advocate of detritus in this thread solved any issue in someone's tank by adding detritus to the invaded system and earned a fix or reversal of the invasion since we talked last here? How have you used your stance on detritus in the last few months to affect another's tank? Link that please

Scott C I'm very interested in seeing any work threads avail

We've cleared a few more invaded tanks by removing detritus, that's every month in the sand rinse thread.





What I'm specifically interested in seeing or knowing is how someone here reshaped or featured their reefing paradigm by work done and collected in any other tank besides their own. It's my claim nobody who documents work done in challenge tanks fails to link detritus as a core causative in all of them.


Since May, the authors posting here or the readers who took away their approaches have either done well with storing detritus or they haven't when working with others reefs, post what you have pls


I'm always pressing for these theory threads to be made into some sort of study-able action...let's see what everyone has done with these notions the last few months

Maybe the issue is to much fish in too little water? Maybe the whole discussion should be what bioload the system can handle with what level of maintenance?

 

[brandon429]

Well said

someone who is working on a challenge tank somewhere, remove some fish and re evaluate the nutrient import/export to test and see and post back.


It will be hard to do and slower paced, but we did nine pages of reflecting and theory so far, now is time for thread work and application to see if detritus is as bad as it's made out to be.

We know it's not bad when kept in scale and balance as marine snow feed, now let's venture into simply how detritus affects the general reefer and the things they want help on in posts

I saw fourteen people reading this thread half an hour ago, one of that group is either preparing a reef tank action or responding to one...at home...or for a friend, link for us something physical we can see how you factored detritus in your work

 

[atoll]

I only report what I do or don't do. I don't use prefiltration of any kind apart from a skimmer. I use Oxydators which helps keep cyno away. There are people who remove as much detritus as they can and regular yet appear to have cyno issues. I have had small amounts of cyno but it's never been a problem. Sanjay? Reports he gets small amounts of cyno in his tank but again states it's not a problem. Cyno only appears to be an issue when it is an issue. To some a small amount of cyno or GHA is an issue to others not at all. If your corals are thriving and all is good then I see no problem but each to their own.

 

[brandon429]

Ok how about this angle

Pick a cyano challenge invasion tank, many are posted on each forum asking for help. Since RtR is advocate of shared info we can easily include any example from another site running live time as well

Someone here let them know we want to observe the effects/ineffects of detritus in their particular challenge and how the remedy works, many would enjoy being part of the analysis


We link the cure works here and must not clean the sandbed. Totally simple framing for the test whether detritus matters at any point, I agree there is nothing wrong with any aged balanced reef even if it's not meticulously cleaned, it's an ideal feeder network

Since we don't want to eliminate ongoing work with common challenges, my test above will at least show if detritus factors during imbalance scenarios, interested in anything that's refreshing/new work study

And for the rinsers challenge, we'll take the meanest example anyone willing to clean, even dinos. Let's do any type of testing for these next few pages

Any readers got an ongoing invasion from a matted challenger of some type, offer up an example works. I'll link next one I get

 

[Paul B]

About 6 weeks ago I moved my entire tank 60 miles. I moved everything including most of the water but I bought a slightly larger tank as my old one was all scratched and I couldn't get it out of the wall. I also think the stand legs would have crumbled if I tried to move it.
Anyway, we talk about detritus and we mean that stuff most people see moving around on top of their sand. Here is a picture of my detritus when we removed my UG filter. That's my Son N Law holding it up and you can see it is "all" mud. There isn't even any gravel left in the lower layers and yet the tank was thriving with everything living and spawning. The tank was always crystal clear and I never had to quarantine.

The nitrates were 160 and the po4 was 2.0. Now I moved everything and had to wash about 3/4s of the gravel in fresh water and leave it in a bucket for a month where it and a lot of the rocks developed hydrogen sulfide which is normal, but deadly.
The little gravel and rocks I put in my tank were just slightly rinsed in old seawater to remove the mud that would have swirled around.
Now, after bleaching the rest of the gravel and rocks I added it all to my tank with new NSW it is very clean and as I figured, the tank looks lousy.
There is hair algae, cyano, coral slime and all sorts of floating things. The tips of the corals died from algae. This is normal for a major tank move but it goes to show that a clean tank is not always the best thing. It can take years for a tank to mature enough so it is stable which is why there are so many tank crashes. The vast majority of tanks on here are a year or two old and very unstable. I am feeding very heavily now, not just for the fish, but I want a nice supply of detritus or "muck" to develop under my gravel as I feel that is needed for a very healthy, long lasting, stable, immune, no problem tank.
I have been running a diatom filter now to remove the floating slime exuded from the corals and tube worms. They are just not happy in the clean tank but they will be soon. If it doesn't crash in the interim.