Deep sand bed question?

I

Incaico

Premium Member
If I'm setting up a deep sand bed in my refugium do I really need a deep sand bed in my tank? My fuge is 8 inches wide, 16 inches long and 12 inches tall. How deep should the sand bed be? It is a 29 gallon fuge for a 55 gallon tank.
 
The more sand you have the more bio load you can put in your tank (more fish and coral). It also gives better stability and more room for bioadversity. You dont have to do it at all, you could go bare bottom, Good luck.
 
You don't have to, but you will not be able to keep any animals that need it or prefer it . I personally think it makes a tank look more natural.
 
To get any real nitrate reduction you need 5-6 inches of sand in the system( fug or the display). Hope that helps. [smilie=smile.gif]
 
I dont think there is very much benefit from a deep sand bed or a sand bed at all....except for obvious fish that require the bed for food or shelter and Aesthetics that some prefer. Just my opinion though
 
Hi,

Here some good information on DSB's here by Dr. Ron Shimek. http://www.ronshimek.com/deep_sand_beds.html You could setup and run a normal SB in the tank along with a remote DSB but it depend's on what you want your DSB to do. I personally went away with DSB's and run a normal SB in the tank along with a sulfur de-nitrator. I also maintain a normal waterchange schedule whenever possible....nothing like a lil' fresh SW. [smilie=lol.gif]

Cheers,
 
They are talking about a DSB in the refugium not the display tank. So really a DSB in a small refugium area will not really do any good.
 
@bbprinting wrote:
They are talking about a DSB in the refugium not the display tank. So really a DSB in a small refugium area will not really do any good. said:
I agree, it didnt do anything for my fuge so i took it all out and only have rubble rock and macro in there and its just as good> That was with miracle mud and just regular sand. Neither made a diff and it mostly just made the fuge a sink for crud. Dont get me wrong i like the sand in the display but it doesnt need to be deep most times. More rock would be better over all in my opinion or YES....do more water changes. Thats what i have been doing and its been looking so much better. I rarely have to scrap my glass at all anymore.... and thats really nice. Maybe once a week and then its just barely anything. My weekly maintaiance is down to maybe 15 minutes....sweet becuase im pretty busy.
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@bbprinting wrote:
They are talking about a DSB in the refugium not the display tank. So really a DSB in a small refugium area will not really do any good. said:
You missed the part about RDSB and even a smaller refugium can do quite a lot if setup correctly. A DSB works on the principle of usable bacterial surface area. In a given volume of sand, the usable bacterial surface area rises rapidly as the average particle size decreases. I'm not talking about a 4"x8"x6" area with play sand but given enough room and using the correctly sized sand, the total sediment surface area in even a small tank/refugium can be very impressive. [smilie=wink.gif]

Cheers,
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Not if the entire tank was utilized as a DSB. The length and depth would play much larger role than the width, the surface area should be pretty high. You would need to set it up so there is constant flow across the sandbed so that detritus doesn't settle. You have to set it up for your particular application and give it time to start kicking in...which could take anywhere from 3-8 weeks. There are way's to get something that size to work but that also depends on what you want from your DSB.....nitrate export or a place to grow pod's etc...makes a difference.

Cheers,
 
Even a small DSB in a 5 gallon bucket can make the difference if trates creep up slowly. The whole issue is around providing enough low flow, low oxygen area for anaerobic bacteria to live in to consume excess phosphate from organics and the nitrates, last stage of the ammonia cycle. If there is a enough live rock (or converted base rock) that has enough porosity to provide surface area and low flow you may never have a trate issue. But in many cases you just need a small amount of extra low oxygen space to deal with the trate creep, and the remote sand bed in a bucket or fuge provides just that.

It's not an exact science for everyone - bottom line is: if your live rock system can handle most of your trates and your getting just slight increased readings each month a small remote sand bed (be it in a fuge or bucket) may be enough to deal with it. If you get large build ups of trates each month (usually due to a large bioload to live rock ratio) you need to consider other alternatives like a larger DSB, sulfer reactor, GFO for phosphate, dosing carbon, bio pellets etc. All of these items target trates but I prefer having enough live rock for natural bio diversity with a minimal and somewhat removable DSB to handle the small excess.
 
think of a DSB like this

you have a bucket with a 1" hole in the bottom of it
the hole represents your anearobic bacterias capacity in your live rock to deal with trates

you add water to the bucket at a fixed rate
the water going in represents yuor bio load (or excess food) contributing to trates

if your hole is large enough (enough live rock anearobics) you can process all the trates and will not see a trate increase, the y hole may even be large enough to process more flow (or trates ) with not increase in the bucket

if the hole is not large enough you will see the trates climb - it may be fast or slow but they climb and you have to do something
1) you could make a bigger hole - more live rock
2) you could drill another whole to process the excess - in this case a DSB, the hole can be small if the rate of climb is small
3) remove rising water in the bucket other ways - e.g all the other ways I mentioned above

hope that helps - just wanted to point out that we are talking about processing trates the live rock can't process due to insufficient area for anearobic bacteria. the remaining need to process could be zero, very little, up to a large demand
 
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