It will sink up over time but that impact varies tank to tank, no way is right they're just different.
We now have enough long term nano study tanks to make predictions from and they're solid. Anyone can take a muddy extract test of their detritus and test it against the water table after it sits a few days for quick verification of nitrogen. If that presence isn't harming anything, continue. If it is, blast it out or remove bed altogether.
Both methods sand/no sand work fine.
Retail dosers and feeds make up any water table into a food-diverse setting in tanks where there is no sand at all as one care extreme.
What varies is a hands off technique... the storage route. That's how everyone starts a nano reef. We can predict those well because every dsb tank on the web is that approach, see how outcomes vary? They're not getting nitrate reduction by and large, or nobody would be dosing bacteria to offset. The sand alone would do it.
The reason things diverged into hands-on/rinsed beds was due to different benefits commuted.
Heterogeneity of the bed -increases- along with waste at various stages of reduction in the hands off bed; nutrient sinking varies because people feed differently, they have different lighting and temp requirements, they import and sustain different animals. It's providing feed and bacterial diversity to the system matter of fact. But a hands off sandbed is your number one oxygen consumer in a nano-horrible to have during power outages.
That's a big deal in longevity planning imo. It is for my old pico and directly has paid off, I'm clearly a rinser convert threads show.
What does not diverge is the rinsed, no detritus storing system where the sand is kept white and clean forever by occasional deep cleans. We can get total outcome compliance across pico reefs with that setting, though it's a busier approach at times.
Low oxygen demand and risk, higher orp is the rinsed or non existent sandbed tank. Less heterogeneity, but we're feeding well enough it doesn't hold back coral growth apparently.
I use a six inch dsb in a 12 yr old
one gallon reef. The bed is as clean as when it was new due to occasional parted cleaning. Jamb a stick in the bed and twist around, cloudless. That's how I'm rolling.
we got old examples of both hands off and hands on extreme micro reefs.
