First Pic of the BB 75
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OK, everybody please forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is starboard?
in essance you could use cutting boards, just make sure its food grade. The whole point of BB is to export nutrients faster than that can build in your tank....we all know what a SB is....nutrient trap, so tell me this, if you have a SB running in your system what happening? Yore getting nutrients trapped in your sand which is now causing a nutrient load in your tank. You may ask how.....well if you go BB youre gona have to feed your tank a lil heavier, if you do that youre gonna have excess food waste and more poop from your fish all that equals more nutrients.....The point of BB is to export all those as fast as possible with no hold up. Go over on RC and research this, most if not all people with BB have no sumps, unless it just houses their skimmer. Most wont even have LR in the sump and no macro algea. Sure you could have a remote sand bed but just think, youre not acchieving your goal/purpose of going BB, so you might as well stick with sand in your tank. I can't stress the importance of high flow in these tanks!!! you dont want ANYTHING sitting or resting on the bottom of your tank, it all needs to be kicked up and brought to your skimmer. Oh and why would you want to stir up your sandbed??? Youre gonna cause more problems than good there. Alright I'm done with this topic on here if you would like to talk PM me or please read the kazillion pages on RC about BB tanks.
It's not a fad. I've been doing it for almost 5 years and know others who've done it way longer then that. The whole one is better then the other just chaps me. you can be successful with a DSB, a SSB, or BB. You just have to know what to expect out of each. In my last barebottom (a 135G) I ran a remote DSB in a 20G fuge. Every year I would take the fuge offline and totally remove the sandbed (save a few scoops from the top) clean the fuge and replace with new sand. This was because DSB do have the potential after a long time (usually years) to leach nutrients back into the system to some degree. I also ran a DSB 20G for almost 5 years straight and it had zero issues whatsoever. nutrients in the end were slightly higher (I always had detectable nitrates) but the tank ran beautifully until I broke it down to move here! I ran a SSB in a 92 corner for a couple years, etc.
The reason I go BB now. I love SPS. In fact my 450 has a grand total of one non sps coral. I have tons of flow in the tank. 6 Tunze 6100 and a double wavebox in addition to the Iwaki 55 return. A sandbed would be so uneven in there it would look ridiculous! Bare in some areas while 10 inches deep in others! who wants that?
Is BB different? Yes. There is nothing like a sandbed to process/store waste so as it breaks down you need to remove it. That is done by heavy skimming (and possibly a filtr sock) and vacuuming the bottom. There are big advantages to it, I love the look, theoretically old tank syndrome should be much less of an issue. You can have a much higher fish load generally speaking since much of the waste is removed, etc.
DSB have their advantages also. Mainly if medium to lightly stocked they are very low maintenance. I had a HOB Remora on my 20G, I dosed B-Ionic, did a water change once a month and that was it. No siphoning the bottom, no massive flow, etc. Great low maintenance but not ideal conditions for SPS generally speaking. I really believed if you applied the same maintenance to a DSB to a BB you would get much the same results so if you had insane flow, huge skimming, and vaccumed the top layer of the DSB every week you probably wouldn't trap and build up nutrients, or at a minimum you would do so at a pace that would literally take many years for it to become an issue.
"well if you go BB youre gona have to feed your tank a lil heavier" you don't have to it's generally you have almost the opposite problem of an older SB tank. Instead of trapped nutrients being released back, with all the flow and massive skimming usually associated your water can become to clean! What's bad about that! One way to combat is to feed heavier and it also depends on your stock levels. If you get to a medium load relatively quickly then you won't need to feed more. There will be plenty of nutrients from "normal" feeding.
And the generalization that no one has sumps with sand, etc is just that a generalization. it's true but I know several who run a DSB in a remote sump that are highly successful. They have filter socks before the sump and therefore no detritus buildup there and the sandbeds work great. All acknowledge that someday they may have to replace but that's why i's remote! I personally have about 100 lbs of live rock sacttered throughout my 2 100G troughs I use for sumps. There is no light on them and no detritus since I use filter socks. They have sponges all over them and just help even more with filtration.
I use my overflow (which is 6 ft long and 8" deep and wide) as a fuge like area. I put frags bak there but mainly stuff it with cheato. It just gets ambient light bu the cheato grows fine. it's just another export mechanism.
Lots of ways to skin the cat. I agree know what your getting into but saying things like youwon't be successful with a sandbed in the fuge, etc is just bull!
The reason I go BB now. I love SPS. In fact my 450 has a grand total of one non sps coral. I have tons of flow in the tank. 6 Tunze 6100 and a double wavebox in addition to the Iwaki 55 return. A sandbed would be so uneven in there it would look ridiculous! Bare in some areas while 10 inches deep in others! who wants that?
Is BB different? Yes. There is nothing like a sandbed to process/store waste so as it breaks down you need to remove it. That is done by heavy skimming (and possibly a filtr sock) and vacuuming the bottom. There are big advantages to it, I love the look, theoretically old tank syndrome should be much less of an issue. You can have a much higher fish load generally speaking since much of the waste is removed, etc.
DSB have their advantages also. Mainly if medium to lightly stocked they are very low maintenance. I had a HOB Remora on my 20G, I dosed B-Ionic, did a water change once a month and that was it. No siphoning the bottom, no massive flow, etc. Great low maintenance but not ideal conditions for SPS generally speaking. I really believed if you applied the same maintenance to a DSB to a BB you would get much the same results so if you had insane flow, huge skimming, and vaccumed the top layer of the DSB every week you probably wouldn't trap and build up nutrients, or at a minimum you would do so at a pace that would literally take many years for it to become an issue.
"well if you go BB youre gona have to feed your tank a lil heavier" you don't have to it's generally you have almost the opposite problem of an older SB tank. Instead of trapped nutrients being released back, with all the flow and massive skimming usually associated your water can become to clean! What's bad about that! One way to combat is to feed heavier and it also depends on your stock levels. If you get to a medium load relatively quickly then you won't need to feed more. There will be plenty of nutrients from "normal" feeding.
And the generalization that no one has sumps with sand, etc is just that a generalization. it's true but I know several who run a DSB in a remote sump that are highly successful. They have filter socks before the sump and therefore no detritus buildup there and the sandbeds work great. All acknowledge that someday they may have to replace but that's why i's remote! I personally have about 100 lbs of live rock sacttered throughout my 2 100G troughs I use for sumps. There is no light on them and no detritus since I use filter socks. They have sponges all over them and just help even more with filtration.
I use my overflow (which is 6 ft long and 8" deep and wide) as a fuge like area. I put frags bak there but mainly stuff it with cheato. It just gets ambient light bu the cheato grows fine. it's just another export mechanism.
Lots of ways to skin the cat. I agree know what your getting into but saying things like youwon't be successful with a sandbed in the fuge, etc is just bull!
please show me where I said "you'll never be successful" and I'll appologize. I'll never state anything that says "you'll never be successful" for I personally know the many ways to do things here in the hobby, I've had SSB, DSB and BB tanks and can share all kinds of knowledge from all 3. I'm just offering the points from countless hours of reading and research from lots of big-wigs over on RC and personal exp, take it for whats it worth and no more.
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