how long is the life period of sandbeds

[jenajet]

Ah man ya'll made my head spin! Ok for the simpltons like me this is when I replace my sandbed: when it turns brown and nasty and even after syphoning it stuff starts growing, yuk time to change. A majority of us are not doctors and scientist and this all over our heads, keep it simple for us please

[numan]

Wow!

[SPC]

Originally Posted by salt-rookie

I've been in this hobby since December, 1963 and to debunk the DSB is to also debunk the UG filter in freshwater.

No, actualy they are only partially the same, Phil.

Detritus is processed by anaerobic bacteria and rises to the top and is dissipated into the atsmophere as harmless methane and nitrogen gasses.

How can this happen in a UG filter?

The parts of the ocean floor of which I speak are those occurring immediately below the coral reefs of the world...aragonite DSBs that are 100s of 1,000s of years old and NEVER vacuumed out.

They also don't accumulate detritus to begin with.

When I did my doctoral disertation and the defense thereof...I would NOT have been granted my Doctorate had I NOT been able to defend my work without any reasonable doubt.

Well there are many of us (me included) who would love to go back to a DSB and not have to worry about it going sour. If you can defend your disertation here, IMO this could help many reefers who would like to run DSB tanks.

THIS is why I believe Shimmek is a BAFOON!

You lost me here, Phil. Are you saying that you believe that Shimmeck is a bafoon based on his DSB theories? If so, how do your theories on DSB's differ from his.

This is MY opinion, you don't have to agree, and I won't try to change your mind

Well I can't speak for others, but you can change my mind in a heart beat if you can show the science to back up what you are saying.

Steve

[bill-e]

Just as a data point, my 5" DSB will be 8 years old in June. Sand is that Nature's Ocean "Live Sand" aragonite. Been using a Nilsen reactor since 2000.

[salt-rookie]

Mine is 5 years old, and my coral growth and color are phenominal..I'm not changing a thing. I should have never indicated that I had a preference in a Bear Bottomed crowd.

[Geoff]

all we are saying is that the law of Conservation of Matter exists. you have to remove as much matter as you put in or you will have a problem.

we only provided the proof we have of our claims to make sure we all understand where we are coming from. we expect the same.

DSB's work great for a limited amount of time. i think they are great if you plan on moving in a few years and are just getting started in SW systems. they are very forgiving.

i on the other hand have a tank i do not want to mess with for an indefinate length of time. i do not want to have to change everything out after 3-7 years. i have done that once already and vowed never to do it again. i hated breaking of half dead corals, dead at the bases, to rearrange the tank to get everything out.

we are just pointing out the facts as they are now known.

G~

[mantisfreak]

Originally Posted by salt-rookie

Mine is 5 years old, and my coral growth and color are phenominal..I'm not changing a thing. I should have never indicated that I had a preference in a Bear Bottomed crowd.

Phil,

You might have misunderstood my post. I don't care how one runs their system. I have tanks that are BB and I have DSB and SSB tanks as well.

The fact is that they don't work like Jaubert claimed they would, like Adey claimed they would, like Shimek claimed they would, etc. As long as people understand the pros/cons of any system I'm happy.

SSB beds have slightly different pros/cons.

BB tanks have different pros/cons.

I'll discuss any of them with anyone.

[SPC]

Originally Posted by bill-e

Just as a data point, my 5" DSB will be 8 years old in June. Sand is that Nature's Ocean "Live Sand" aragonite. Been using a Nilsen reactor since 2000.

Hi Bill,

I was looking at your pictures on your web site and it appears as if this is a soft coral/LPS system, is this correct? Also it appears to me from this picture http://www.mv.com/users/besposito/pi...ea12-22-03.jpg that this is not straight Southdown sand (looks to course IMO, more what a plenum would have)?

One more question if you don't mind. If memory serves me, 8 years would have been before Dr Ron came out with his DSB theories,and most reefers would have been opposed to this method. How did you make your decision to go with a 5" DSB (the depth that Ron recommends also)?

Thanks,
Steve

[SPC]

Originally Posted by salt-rookie

Mine is 5 years old, and my coral growth and color are phenominal..

You said earlier that your 5 year old DSB is in your fuge, Bill was talking about the DSB in his main system.

I should have never indicated that I had a preference in a Bear Bottomed crowd.

Phil, my preference is a tank with substrate in it too (for looks), in fact I just added sand back to my tank about a month ago. Another poster to this thread that runs his system with sand is tdwyatt, so you may be a bit off when you use the term "bare bottom crowd" to refer to everyone who has disagreed with you. Now, if your definition of "bare bottom crowd" is all of the reefers who side with the overwhelming scientific evidence that deals with what happens to DSB's in low flow, high organic environments, then I will agree with this definition for this thread.

Originally Posted by Geoff

DSB's work great for a limited amount of time.

Exactly, they make a great sponge, but at some point the sponge fills up and you have to be willing to dispose of it (and hope you got to it in time before damage is done to SPS corals) and get a new one.

i have done that once already and vowed never to do it again.

Me too , but it got to the point for me where I was not enjoying my tank any longer and would have rather gone back to FW. (Note: if my emphasis was SPS corals I would not have made this move).

Steve

[bill-e]

Originally Posted by SPC

Hi Bill,

I was looking at your pictures on your web site and it appears as if this is a soft coral/LPS system, is this correct? Also it appears to me from this picture http://www.mv.com/users/besposito/pi...ea12-22-03.jpg that this is not straight Southdown sand (looks to course IMO, more what a plenum would have)?

Yes, now is it predominately a soft coral system simply because I had a heat crash 3 years ago and lost most lps and clams and my somewhat local reasonable priced source for coral disappeared and I refuse to pay $150 for a Hammer at the LFS. I just lost 3/4 of my remaining Hammer and bleached 1/2 my psamacora because my Sen impeller split open and exposed the innards (I though I had the new style but I didn't) and it took me a while to figure out what was going on. The meltdown stopped the day I changed the impeller. That was also the thing that got me excited again about this hobby.

When I set my tank up there was no such thing as Southdown sand and Carib Sea oolitic was just coming out and VERY expensive. I bought the smallest sand I could find and after thinking about it, it is 1/2 Natures Ocean Biolive sand and 1/2 some other brand of aragonite.

Originally Posted by SPC

One more question if you don't mind. If memory serves me, 8 years would have been before Dr Ron came out with his DSB theories,and most reefers would have been opposed to this method. How did you make your decision to go with a 5" DSB (the depth that Ron recommends also)?

Thanks,
Steve

I'd like to say it was my idea but I cant In 1999 I got most of my info from Reefs.org both on the board and IRC.

Just one comment about DSB or sand bottoms. I know that eventually mine will fail but I dont care. I would not have a reef tank if I had a BB tank. To me I do this because of the enjoyment I get out of it and the way it looks and I dont like the way BB looks. I dont do much SPS because I dont have the time to tinker and to be honest, I prefer the look of flowing softies and LPS.

[salt-rookie]

I have an SPS exclusive system. My DSB is NOT a static pile of sand. I have 60+ times turnover with two very large closed loops on my system. The sand is always shifting back ang forth, to a certain extent. Fecal matter and detritus are suspended in the water column and are removed from the tank via the overflow. the overflow runs 90% to my skimmer/ 10% to my fuge. What DOES land on my sand is siphoned off when I do water changes every Sunday. I do 20% water changes EVERY Sunday and nobody is accounting for the nutrients exported by this weekly practice. I also run a large ball of Cheato as a nutrient export. If I have to change it out in 7 years, so be it...but I LOVE my tank. Thanks for all of your concerns...

[Spridle]

Mine is 6" deep on a 200 gal. and is approaching 9 years no signs of trouble - knock on wood.

[Twitterbait]

before you get too much further please take a look here and read up on the prior discussion, it should only take about 6 hours...

http://thereeftank.com/forums/showth...misconceptions

[tdwyatt]

Heh!

Lemme get the pig out of the tub and I'll shoot you some photos of what happened to my system when the pump went out on a relatively stable old DSB...

Unfortunately, I am dealing with it now (wiuth help from Tony S from Atlanta, who has been gracious enough to kick my butt for my letting it go this far). I know there are limits to DSB functionability, and I have posted many many times on the topic and means of limiting potential losses with DSB's, but I still prefer the look of sand and the critters that prefer sand as well, so, just as I am this weekend, when something makes it fail, I will fix it or replace it.


Just in time for the picnic as well

[boxfishpooalot]

DSB or BB debate

I look at it this way. Imagine it this way:

The Earth is an aquarium. It has a finite amount of water, finite amount of rock, finite amount of organics. Nothing is added to the Earth and nothing is removed. The only thing that happens is one thing is changed from one form to another. Living to dead, from organic to inorganic and back incorporated into a living things cells. Transferred to another thing by it eating it. A fish eats algae, the fish gets eaten by a shark, the shark dies and it is eaten by bacteria/worms/small stuff. That bacteria decompose it(eat it) and then the algae get ahold of the bacterial remains and it starts all over again. Earth is an ecosystem.

This is export. Tanks with sand beds do not export phosphate efficiently. They do export nitrate as nitrogen gas. But what about the Earth and sand beds? Well there is only so much organics that can be processed to nitrogen gas. Phosphate is accumlated faster than its exported because tanks are not true ecosystems.In the ocean, food could be considered to have a set portion that can pass a reef at any given time. While in our tanks, we controll the food. Here is some more food, more phosphates, more nitrogen, more copper, iron, zinc ect. How do we get it out? Biology and skimming. What controlls that. All living things big and small.

So why is the Earth as a self-maintaining ecosystem a good representation of bb vs dsb? Dsb's are great in a ecosystem, such as the earth, but in tanks that have an infinte amount of food to add the only way to effectively remove and export food and all its minerals, is to skimm it out. It can be skimmed out with somthing living, like bacteria, pods, organics that have bacteria in it, algal cells. With them comes out the minerals they used. Think of a skimmer as a shark eating the fishes all day in your tank. Cause thats what its doing.

But the problem with sandbeds and skimmers is that skimmers cant get to the basic stuff before the biology do. The detritus gets trapped in sand and rocks, gets eaten by bacteria and become phosphates ect. Thats the problem. If you could suck out all detritus/poop, wich is a huge store of nutrients, you would have very little food/nutrients left in the system for bacteria. This is good. Because bacteria started the ecosystem after all.

My point is the aquarium does not function anything like the earth does. It has food input. The earth does not. God is not standing on the cloud sprinkling flake food into the ocean. The food is created from the reef. And most ecosystems take millions of years of dealing with Earths changes before a civilization of corals start to grow and find this spot is perfect. The major difference between tanks and earth? Earth is dependant on organisms to create its ecosystems. Each plant relies on another, each fish needs somthing. Each bacteria needs that fish poop. If one species dies, it could very well make another extinct.