How are Wet/Drys and DSB's alike?

[Spanky]

Probably a lot more than you think.

[Junkzoo]

Here we go again,,,hang on!

[Spanky]

How do you set up a tank with a wet/day?

Lot's of live rock and the wet/dry. You know how we're always telling people to remove the wet/dry? And they always ask if they'll have enough filtration without it. Then they realize that they do and the wet/dry was overkill.

[Reefdude5]

Really, I thought that LR took wastes through the nitrification cycle, but didn't keep any solid waste on/in it, and that the problem with a wet/dry is that they held particulate matter on them, therefore becoming "nitrate factories"?

[Spanky]

That's another way they are alike. Both systems were originally designed to handle waste (detritus) left in the system.

After people had used wet/drys for a while, they started figuring out that they needed to get the detritus out.

DSB are also designed to leave detritus in the system.

[Alice]

Oh you can get solid waste in your LR all right; you should have seen me flushing the rock in my nano with clean SW. Yuck!

[MiddletonMark]

Ah, another can of worms opened

Yeah, when I removed my trickle filter [after cycling rock] is when a lot of people were telling me online `you better add a DSB before you start stocking much, you're going to want one' ... and the logic of it seemed amusing [confusing] at the time ... as while the DSB also performs denitrification - it seemed that both DSB and trickle filter would accumulate detritus. And neither is fun to clean out.

My opinion, of course ...

[photobarry]

Wet/Dry? Man, that's old school! Do people still use those? They're easier to replace than a DSB. I guess that's not really a similarity though.

[icebear]

Originally posted by Spanky
How do you set up a tank with a wet/day?

dunno Spanks, how DO you set up a tank with a wet day?

[icebear]

sorry, i'm just not wearing my intellectual uniform today...

[Reefdude5]

You buy a wet/dry system, and then wait to figure out you don't want/need it, and then you throw away the biomedia, that's how!

[MiddletonMark]

My cat seems to think the bio-balls work as great kitty toys and she goes and poops in artifical sand substrate ...

I guess I know what she thinks of them

[ok, time to quit hijacking and not being constructive, even if I'm bored on a Friday afternoon at work ...]

[Spanky]

Let me 'try' to get you guys back on track here.

For a long time everything that went wrong was un-fairly blamed on nitrates. Algae issues, even cyano, right up to nitrate poisoning. There's some articles still floating around on nitrate poisoning BTW and tons of articles on lowering nitrates using algae and plants.

Elevated nitrates are the result of elevated organics. What is associated with elevated organics that's extremely hard (impossible) for hobbyists to test for? (impossible for scientists too)

Because of the association between elevated organics and elevated nitrates, and the inability of measures to test for phosphates, nitrates have taken the blame.

Now what does a wet/dry and a DSB have in common?

[tdwyatt]

both are actually for cats?

[MiddletonMark]

Give me a P, give me an H, give me a O [ok, enough typing]

What's that spell?

Phosphates!

-Now, I suppose an unchanged filter sock, uncleaned sponges, filter floss left in too long ... etc would all be equally bad in this method. A little easier to clean out ... and I know you might not want to hear this ... but possible a less efficient storage/sponge method than a DSB [at least for the short term].

Over the long-term, the DSB is the larger pain to clean out - it's just IMO that all this gunky crud that is `left' there is a seemingly more inert. Seemingly, at least.

Sorta strange to think of these all as mechanical filtration, but in a sense, that's what they are in ways.