What's on your bottom?

[vettesarebest]

Well be no means am I an expert at this but i think it helps. As long as you have it sometimes being stirred up ir churned then your fine. I have a SSB about 2 1/2'' and my Maroon's keep most of it stirred up. She likes to move it alot. I think as long as you have like Nassarius snails or sand stars your fine. I dont think you even really need those. I've never herd of this. However yes you want to keep detritus in the water colum moving around so it can be removed by the filtration. Hope this helps.

 

[vettesarebest]

Well by no means am I an expert. I think as long as it is sometimes being stirred up then it is fine. The addition of Nassarius snails and sand stars really helps with this. My Maroons always are moving the sand with there tails. I really do not think you need these if you have some flow over it. Of course you want flow over it so detritus does not land and it can be removed by the filtration. Also we keep it stirred up when we do water changes and clean the sand. I hope this helps but I probably just told you things you already know.

 

[briandg]

I'm definitely no expert, but I think a ssb is fine as long as you have some sand sifter inverts to keep it stirred up. I have a 55 using a canister and live rock with mine, and my trates stay between 0 and 5. I do water changes every 2 weeks. I'm a few weeks away from getting my upgrade a 180 w/ a 40 gal sump .

 

[mwitten]

CGill311 wrote: It would appear our poll calculator is an idiot.

I suspect this >100% thing is from folks like me, who have two tanks.
I have one DSB and one BB. The poll was setup with checkboxes, so you can select multiple options, as I did... -})

It is interesting to see the stats...

-Mike

 

[reefman61686]

i have bb in my 75 it had a dsb of crushedcoral but i took it out because it was full of detritus

 

[ms_ k]

SSB, but my dragon goby tends to creat DS and SS areas within the tank. There are places where the bottom glass is nearly exposed and places where the sand gets piled up to 5" or so. It doesn't really matter what I do; it always ends up like that.

 

[mfliin]

I would have to bet I have one of the deepest sand beds around. I say this because I had friends/family search Lauderdale and the Keys for aragonite based sand (they loved the vinegar testing)and then once they found it...well everyone knows NOT to tell me they are going on vacation to South Florida anymore. Too bad my brother lives there...at least he knows what to get me for Birthdays!

I had them bring back around eight buckets of sand. I actually have two sizes of sand and it worked out great! The deepest sand bed (around 6-7")is in my fish only tank! I know....what is this guy thinking-right? Well, the aragonite keeps the ph at 8.3. I do have lots of sand sifters: yellow-headed sleeper goby, three orange nerite snails, and three sand sifting seastars. I also have a lot of water flow (over 1000 gal/hr) for a 155. This tank is mostly open with little rock touching the sand to create dead areas. Eventually I will introduce some corals...once I upgrade the lighting.

I have the same DSB in my tonga branch eel tank. The tonga branch allows the same thing to occur-little surface area coverage, so not a lot of nitrates.
Although the eel does have the sand piled up in the corners and the middle of the tank you can see the plenum on the bottom.

My reef has only a 2.5" sand bed. I found that the more rock work I had the more dead areas it produced....therefore I went with less sand. Next time I do a tear down, I will use pvc rings to keep all rocks off the sand and will go to a DSB as well.

All tanks have plenums....How many of you with DSB's have plenums/don't have plenums?

Mike

This picture is of the fish only...the tape shows 5 because I couldn't get it all the way down to the bottom of the tank due to the crown moulding!

 

[matttvi]

you guys can come over to my house and check out my bottom if you want... it's deep.