Do you run sand in your fuge?

[jason sartain]

justindville1987;416321 wrote: Dsb???

DSB= Deep sand bed

 

[justindville1987]

Wow I feel like a dummy lol thanks

 

[jason sartain]

HA,we've all been there!!Check out this thread.

 

[sailfish]

In one of mine I have 4.5".

Joe

 

[hackman72]

dawgdude;416334 wrote: Silicate Based sand is 100% inert. I cant find the article right now but a test was done and it showed that none of the silica from play sand released any silica in the water.

wsh I knew that when I bought 60 lbs of CarabSea Oilitic.

 

[hackman72]

ricksconnected;416045 wrote: ok i still dont get it honestly. (i cant have one of these because i disturb the sand bed enough as it is on my own for whatever reason.)
i just dont get how they work. why use sugar sand? a powerhead blows that crap everywhere.

It's not entirely advisable to run a DSB in the DT itself. IMO it should be remote or in a sump or fuge. You wouldn't want a powerhead or anything in there with it for that reason. Once it gets into suspension, it takes a little for it to settle back out. If you're hitting it with a powerhead, even indirectly, you'll create a sand storm inside your tank.

The bare bones basic principle is this. Different bacterias live and "work" in varying amounts of oxygen. 1" of fine sand will allow for nitrifying bacterias based on dissolved oxygen in the water. 1" to 3" of sand hits an unhappy balance between oxygen layers and tends to work against the sands ability to carry out nitrification or work well as an NNR (natural nitrate reducer). These numbers carry a variety of other factors with them and are not "hard" numbers so to speak. It is possible to get bacteria in varying levels to carry out the processes. It's definately not impossible but, it's not very common. If you have 4" of sand or more, you're likely to have both processes going on in the sand bed. Personally,I don't want to stare at a wall of sand in my DT so I keep it remote in the fuge. Ideally, you'd want it to be over 8" deep if you have over 100 gallons system water. The flow is a very widely debated point. My experience is that I have about 450gph flowing over a sump section that is 12" x 16" with about 4.5" of sand. I have a 120 gallon tank w/ a 30g sump and with displacement have exactly 99 gallons of system water. Yes, I took the time to actually add water 1 gallon at a time and count them to get the exact amount. And, using the finest grain sand possible helps keep detritus settled on the surface and has a larger surface area for bacteria to live on...

...and I've had 0 nitrates for over 2 months now.