Aquarist007
New member
I would put it in the sump as to keep the water pristine in the frag tank.
Deep Sand Bed -- Anatomy & Terminology
- Thread starter Whys
- Start date
I would put it in the sump as to keep the water pristine in the frag tank.
Aquarist007
New member
I have several bins and cans as remote refugia. One is an early deep sand bed effort about 6 inches deep. I have stacked rock over about half of the surface area. The others include bare bottom chaeto areas lit on opposite photo period and cryptic live rock only areas.Display and frag tanks are a mix of bare bottom and shallow sand bed with one older deep sand bed.
Aquarist007
New member
erics3000
Active member
So many thread discussing the same basic question.
I hate the fact my fuge get full of detritus. Cleaning my cheato in my fuge always drops crap back in. I was also thinking about just leaving my rock and 10dsb in my fuge and putting cheato in my sump. The only thing that stoped me in the past was I would have to get another light for the cheato in the sump. I agree keeping the fuge clean so it always have a positive impact instead of being another place to just trap poop. A little extra light is well worth it. I am also changing my flow to my fuge and sump also. I had half my drains going to my sump and half to my fuge. I am only going to let my skimmer water go to my fuge to try and keep my rock from getting full of poop. The water will return to my sump with a new section for the cheato before it enters my display.
I realize I also need to cut back on my feeding. I really want to get things going smooth so I can start getting heavy with SPS. I have a good amount of fish and still want to add more. I said i wasn't going to add any fish until I got my nitrates down and see how a few SPS do. I have also been working on a w/c system so I ca stay consistent.
Cap what are your nitrates around?
Tom do you have a lot of fish? What are you nitrates? If you had a larger display would you mix some softies and sps and LPS, or do you feel there is a big benefit in growth keeping each tank a species tank?
I hate the fact my fuge get full of detritus. Cleaning my cheato in my fuge always drops crap back in. I was also thinking about just leaving my rock and 10dsb in my fuge and putting cheato in my sump. The only thing that stoped me in the past was I would have to get another light for the cheato in the sump. I agree keeping the fuge clean so it always have a positive impact instead of being another place to just trap poop. A little extra light is well worth it. I am also changing my flow to my fuge and sump also. I had half my drains going to my sump and half to my fuge. I am only going to let my skimmer water go to my fuge to try and keep my rock from getting full of poop. The water will return to my sump with a new section for the cheato before it enters my display.
I realize I also need to cut back on my feeding. I really want to get things going smooth so I can start getting heavy with SPS. I have a good amount of fish and still want to add more. I said i wasn't going to add any fish until I got my nitrates down and see how a few SPS do. I have also been working on a w/c system so I ca stay consistent.
Cap what are your nitrates around?
Tom do you have a lot of fish? What are you nitrates? If you had a larger display would you mix some softies and sps and LPS, or do you feel there is a big benefit in growth keeping each tank a species tank?
Aquarist007
New member
I would suggest you clean your chaeto more often. You can rinse it in the refugium itself and or increase the flow through the fuge every once and while. Both will give the fish a little more critters to dine on
I have undetectable nitrates and phosphates with 16 fish(4 of them tangs) but I have two fuges and over 200 lbs of live rock spread out over the system
I am also a firm believer on weekly water changes
elegance coral
They call me EC
Why have LR outside of the display? I understand Capn's thinking. Move the biological filter to another tank, freeing up space for fish to swim in the display. I get this, but if there is enough LR in the display to support the biological load, why add LR in other areas? Naturally, I'm not familiar with Capn's system, but judging from his avatar, he has plenty of LR in the display to support even a very large biological load. At some point, adding more LR becomes counter productive. A given system will only be able to support "X" number of aerobic nitrifying bacteria. If there is enough surface area for these bacteria, increasing the surface area will not increase "X". It will simply spread the population thinner. These bacteria are essential for creating the anaerobic areas where denitrification takes place. If the population of these bacteria is spread thinner, oxygen penetrates deeper into the LR, reducing the anaerobic area, and pushing it deeper into the LR. We want our anaerobic area to be large and close to the surface of the LR where there is more water movement. To do this, we need dense populations of aerobic bacteria on the surface of the LR. Bacteria living in LR produce large quantities of detritus. Most of us filter our water as it leaves the display. This enables us to remove this detritus. If we have LR in the sump/fuge with no means of removing this detritus before it reaches the return pump, it will simply be pumped to the display, or settle and rot. Then the nutrients released will be pumped back to the display. Very few systems have filtration between the return pump and display. The only time I could see a benefit from housing LR outside the display, would be if there isn't enough in the display to support the biological load. This would be a very rare situation. In fact, I have never seen a reef tank suffer from this problem. I have been reading these forums, running many different systems myself, and talking to reefers for years, and I have never come across a situation where the biological load exceeded the LR's biological filtering abilities. You would need a very large biological load and very few LR's before this could become an issue.
Providing more surface area for anaerobic activity in particular is a strong plus for heteroptrophic bacteria in my opinion. I don't think they thin out or that most captive aquaria have a lack of nutrients for them. The goal is keeping soluble nitrogen(NO3) and phosphate (PO4) near natural levels which are extremely low and difficult to achieve in an aquarium. More live rock out of the display is a positive not a negative. Live rock also provides fauna such as sponges and filter feeders which add to the bio diversity of the system.
Aquarist007
New member
I humbly debate the issue with you of being able to have enough live rock in the display system alone.
I understanding that cycling(of bacteria) is a life long process in a marine tank. Yes the bacteria cycle to a new bioload and their new numbers drop off to equate to handling the current bioload in the tank.
I believe a problem can occur in a maxed out system when a death occurs. Having extra bacteria, however thread out can possibly prevent a major tank crash.
In my current case I have a bioload of
yellow, blue, sailfin, and powder blue tang (they average 4-5 inches)
They also require constant addition of nori, rommaine and spirulina algae flake food)
I also have:
foxface, two damsels, two anthias, two gobies, 1 bartlet, 1 pj cardinal, hawk fish, coral beauty, cream angel--all mature sized fish.
My system simply could not handle the nitrates and since it is a mixed reef that was a concern to me.
First I added a 39 gal tote full of algae and about 4 inches of sand.(In hindsight I would not have added the sand but it was 4 years ago before I was even on RC)
After 6 months that really was bringing the nitrates down to zero so I added a second 39 gal fuge. This was a deep sand bed and has about 40 lbs of live rock in it.
That did the trick--zero nitrates since.
I should add that rock comes and goes from that tank---when ever I sell a cube to someone I use the live rock and replace it.
Aquarist007
New member
Aquarist007
New member
How about in the situation of new tank syndrome where the reefer has added to much to quickly and the tank crashes. I have dealt with that situation many times(not my own systems)
elegance coral
They call me EC
This takes place when the biological load has exceeded the biological filtering abilities of the bacteria in the system. This usually isn't a case of insufficient surface area for the bacteria in the LR. These hobbyists are simply increasing the biological load faster than the bacterial populations can adjust to it. The remedy for most of these cases isn't adding more LR. It's simply giving the bacteria time to colonize the LR that already exists in the system. It's the bacteria that does the work. Not the surface area.
elegance coral
They call me EC
Food supplies govern populations. This is a law of nature that no life can get around. Not even us. Once a system becomes well established, there will be a balance reached between the nutrients produced by the system and the bacterial populations. Once this balance is reached, adding more surface area will not increase the bacterial populations. Food/nutrients/carbon becomes the limiting factor. If you have 10 camels living on 5 acres of desert and you feed them enough to support 10 camels, can you increase the number of camels simply by increasing the number of acres they live on? No. You could give them miles of desert, but if they only have enough food for 10, the population can not be increased. The camels may spread out over the whole area, but there will always be 10 camels unless the food supply is increased. A stable, mature system will produce a relatively stable and constant supply of food for bacteria. You can throw all the LR you want into such a system and the bacterial population will change little.
The only time surface area can increase bacterial populations is when surface area is the limiting factor. How many cases have you seen where someone is trying to cycle a reef tank, but the ammonia and nitrite simply won't go away, because there is not enough surface area in the LR for the bacteria? I've never seen this problem. One good piece of LR has a huge surface area, and can house a gazillion bacteria. The bacteria simply need the time to reproduce and reach the balancing point with the nutrients of the system. It doesn't take a great deal of LR to reach this point.
I don't know much about camels but your position is not sustainable unless the tanks of which you speak are at near 0 PO4(phosphate) and NO3( nitrate) as they are on a natural reef. Have you tested for these on the tanks of which you speak? They're not the same as ammonia and nitrite.Most aquariums have concentrations of life that far exceed that in the ocean and require all the help they can get and many serious aquarists struggle to maintain them at low levels . For perspective consider that a cubic meter of space( about a 200 gallon tank) on the Great Barrrier Reef has about a million gallons of water pass through it daily. The well stocked aquarium is full of excess nitrogen and phosphorous expelled as waste and via respiration from living things not to mention uneaten food.It has no where to go and will quickly build to levels harmful to corals and other organisms.
There is no reasonable argument that too much live rock is not helpful , in my opinion, nor water volume for that matter.Obviously too much rock in the display cuts down on swimming room and flow but rock in cryptic areas doesn't.. Surface area provides the areas for the bacteria to colonize including anaerobic sites and when they do you may if your lucky be able to keep nitrate and phosphate at manageable levels with less gfo and gac and other mechanical or chemical interventions. Alternatively sparsely populated tanks with large water changes are in order .
There is no reasonable argument that too much live rock is not helpful , in my opinion, nor water volume for that matter.Obviously too much rock in the display cuts down on swimming room and flow but rock in cryptic areas doesn't.. Surface area provides the areas for the bacteria to colonize including anaerobic sites and when they do you may if your lucky be able to keep nitrate and phosphate at manageable levels with less gfo and gac and other mechanical or chemical interventions. Alternatively sparsely populated tanks with large water changes are in order .
I think their overall numbers decrease and level off after a spike
Sure aerobic bacterial activity drops back after a big spike probably some anaerobic activity too. But the goal is to keep a population that can keep up with ongoing nutrient load. While nitrifying activity comes quickly,anaerobic activity takes a while longer. More surface area via live rock or other means will in my opinion afford more constancy and lower NO3 and PO4 since bacteria consume these along with organic carbon.
If NO3 and/ or PO4 or organic carbon are truly very near zero 0 then extra rock wont make much difference beyond the habitat and the fauna it sustains. But how many tanks with an average bioload can honestly boast undetectable nitrate and phosphate without substantial surface area and anaerobic zones or mechanical and chemical supports( skimmers, carbon dosing, denitrators,gac ,etc.).
For perspective consider that PO4 needs to be < 0.03ppm to be limiting to green nuisance algae. Natural reef surface water values are only about 0.005ppm.
Nitrate , less than 0.2ppm is recommended for aquariums although levels up to around 10ppm do no harm in my experience. Surface water values for nitrate on a reef are a whopping 0.1ppm. Honestly , there is no reason to worry that a bit of extra liverock will upset the bacterial food web. There will plenty of nitrate and phosphate to go around and the extra surface avaiable surface area is a plus.
Further as bacteria jam into pores they form a mulm which can clog them. More pores it seems to me would obviate this effect.
erics3000
Active member
Camels??????????????Can you make a comparison????????? I am not a Marine Biologist but that is a little big to swallow.
elegance coral
They call me EC
If you don't like camels, put some other life form in its place. It doesn't matter what life form you replace it with. Birds, dogs, snakes, humans, we are all governed by the same basic laws of nature. Even the microbes that live on LR.
Aquarist007
New member
So I only need 10lbs of live rock in my system rather then the 200 lbs of it.
Not trying to be sarcastic here, but how does one calculate how much rock we need. Most of the time the 1 to 1.5 lbs per gallon is blindly followed.
Where did or who came up with that number in the first place:idea:
