Just corals

[Viv]

Maybe this belongs in the Think Tank, but if the rock can leak all the extras you don't want and a sand bed becomes the nutrient wasteland, why not just have a tank with just corals, sump that just recirculates the water. No sand bed, no plants, no rocks - just the coral/fish....would this result in a prosperous system? Other than getting rid of food and poo there really wouldn't be problems would there?

[Leonardo's Reef]

I Think you'll always need a little surface for bacteria to process the ammonia (highly toxic) that's in the fishpoo/food etc.
Even if you have the best skimmer in the world, it can't get rid of all the fish-poo/food. That's why you always need a little surface to let the bacteria process that amonia into less harmfull chemicals.

My opinion is that you'll always need an amount of live rock...

-Leonardo

[Barcochris]

Not live rock,,, but just a surface to colonize. Could you not just use the ceramic media, that would be east to replace if needed. It could go in the sump.

[Wiskey]

From what I understand the skimmer can't remove raw food, look what happens to your skimmer when you feed, you need the rock (or rather it's assoiated bacteria) to take that food and turn it into a form the skimmer can export. The rock also containes areas that are anarobic, for de-nitrifaciton, and unlike a sand bed cleans itself (gravity). You can still load LR up, but it comes to an equiliberim with the water, so if you mess up and the rock loads up, then it is easy enough to clean back up by cleaning the water up.

HTH,
Whiskey

[Leonardo's Reef]

Originally Posted by Barcochris

Not live rock,,, but just a surface to colonize. Could you not just use the ceramic media, that would be east to replace if needed. It could go in the sump.

I personaly think that ceramic media can't provide such a diverse and constant source of bacteria.

I can't scientificly explain it but if you compare aquariums with only base rock to Live Rock aquariums I always see a huge difference.

-Leonardo

[Viv]

Yeah, but if you had a settling sump that was using a sump sock to catch the big stuff and ceramic media that was porous enough to colonize bacteria you would basically have live rock in the sump and no need for a tank full of rock. You could keep fish and coral in the tank and let all the mechanical and biological filtering happen in the sump. I think. Isn't this what is happening in a BB tank, except that the LR is in the tank rather than in the sump?

[Wiskey]

The sump has little flow, this makes deatris settle out, the tank has high flow to get it out of the tank.

This makes the sump area a usefull settling area for later syphoning, it also makes it a poor place for LR, or ceramic media IMHO.

Whiskey