Bottoms up!

[LedZeppelinfan101]

I have a professor here at Purdue that I met through a different professor that I'm assisting as a co-author on an unrelated dissertation. He and I have gotten to talking quite a bit, and he asked me to aid him in setting up an aquarium in his office. He has two tanks right now, a 65 gallon undrilled cube, and a 150 gallon drilled tank. He doesn't know for sure yet which one will be used (I'm pushing for the 150 ).

Now for the topic up for debate. I want to try to get both sides of this issue, so don't be afraid to play the devil's advocate depending on which way the issue is being pushed. Which would you suggest, Bare Bottom or Jaubert-Plenum? How about a DSB with Plenum and a Skimmer?

[grallster]

Depends on what he teaches...if he's a biology professor--the life in a DSB will keep him interested. If he's a microbiologist--the anaerobes in a plenum would be worthy of a paper. If he's a physics professor--I'd love to see his equation on random water movement in a barebottom. And if he's a chemistry professor--it doesn't matter because he'll only be interested in the supplements anyways!


Seriously though, it depends on what you want to keep, maintence you're willing to do, size of the skimmer, funding, blah, blah, blah. We all should know by now that there is more than one way to get the same results.
A DSB with a plenum won't work though because you need to use a coarser substrate than sand (2-4mm) and I personally feel a skimmer is a must no matter what else is in the setup.

[bklynmet]

the only hesitation I have with DSB is that a prolonged power outage that stops water movement over the DSB will cause the harmful anaerobic stuff to come out and do some damage to livestock... I believe that is the cause of failure for a lot of tanks with DSB. Therefore, if there is minimal chance of outage to circulation pumps, then I like the use of DSB because it does enable you to get nitrates to near undetectable levels...