Deep Sand Bed -- Anatomy & Terminology

elegance coral said:
Well you asked. LOL

I have a large haddoni in my display, so I believe it's important for me to have a DSB. I have stony corals and other very delicate creatures in my tank, so I can't afford to have a rotting, bug infested, compost pile on the bottom of my tank. About once a month, when I do a water change, I vacuum all of the sand with a gravel vac. This removes the detritus and keeps the sand sparkling white. It's amazing how much light reflects off the white sand and back into the tank. I have ledges and over hangs near the sand, and they are much brighter underneath than the caves in the rocks further up. If you allow your sand to become choked with rot and decay, like a Shemik sand bed, you don't get that reflected light, because the sand turns ugly and brown. So, IMHO, a deep sand bed will help move the critters closer to the light. If you keep the sand clean, it will also reflect a great deal of light back into the tank, further increasing the PAR your corals are exposed to.
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True enough. However, if you keep your sandbed sparkling clean, you also are not going to get any of the benefits of a deep sandbed other than having a raised reflective bottom on your tank. If that is your only goal, why go with a DSB to begin with so you have to do the extra maintainence? There are other options for keeping the sandbed clean, especially if you have a larger system. I have a buddy with a 210, and it maintains a fat and happy diamond watchmen as well as a yellow watchmen, and the surface of the sandbed is nice and clean.
 
Scopus Tang said:
If that is your only goal, why go with a DSB to begin with so you have to do the extra maintainence?
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Well, like I explained. In my case I have a sand dwelling anemone. There are many other animals we keep that either require sand, or are able to live a much more natural life when sand is provided. Like tangs, some wrasses, gobies, shrimp, and I'm sure many others.

Even when I run a BB tank, I vacuum the bottom from time to time. We all change water. It doesn't take a great deal of effort to move a gravel vac along the bottom while you syphon the water out of the tank.

There are other options for keeping the sandbed clean, especially if you have a larger system. I have a buddy with a 210, and it maintains a fat and happy diamond watchmen as well as a yellow watchmen, and the surface of the sandbed is nice and clean.
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That's an option that would work in the right situation. It wouldn't work very well for me, or for those that keep corals like trashy's on their sand. Like you said, it would also require a large tank, as many of these fish starve in smaller tanks.
 
elegance coral said:
Even when I run a BB tank, I vacuum the bottom from time to time. We all change water. It doesn't take a great deal of effort to move a gravel vac along the bottom while you syphon the water out of the tank.
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If all you're doing is running a gravel vac along the surface of the DSB, you're not truly preventing the occurance of debris within the sandbed. Personally, having spent years vaccuming 2 to 3" gravel substrate in FW tanks, I can't imagine the amount of effort required to truly vaccum 5 to 6" of sand.

elegance coral said:
That's an option that would work in the right situation. It wouldn't work very well for me, or for those that keep corals like trashy's on their sand. Like you said, it would also require a large tank, as many of these fish starve in smaller tanks.
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Granted, but the OP above was asking about the potential benefits, risks, and methodologies for running a 155gal or bigger tank - more than sufficient surface are to handle this type of sand maintanence option.
 
If the main concern with DSB is toxic build up in the lower areas why not add something to possible prevent this from occurring? Maybe a heart urchin or other deep diggers?

Also if you have a refuge attached to your main tank maybe some predators to your sands micro fauna is not such a bad thing after all.
 
Make your decision and accept advice from those who have success with that type of system. If you let yourself be pulled in too many directions by all the different opinions on this site you are guaranteed to fail.

My DSB is 10 yrs old. Been away from RC for a while cuz things were running great. I went on the road for work and was gone for 3 months. My GF and LFS had detailed instructions. Just got back and had to rejoin RS because for the first time fish were diappearing. Like in 1 month 9 very old fish just disappeared. THEY DIED of course. All my soft coral shriveled up and died. Almost all. I knew thigs were bad when my 5 yr old Yellow Figi died. Funny the BTA doubled in size.....I rejoined RC and frankly haven't sought any advise in at least 3-4 yrs....My CA, ALK and MAG was really bad. So I FIGURE (bad move) I'll check in and wow my head is spinning. I have a DSB and I wonder is it crashing? So I get this new thing Bio Fuel. Now I'm gonna get a detritivores kit and seed the bed. then I read about Neovit and Vodka dosing. I am basically starting over with an established reef. I have tons of rock and verts and about 10 fish incl a Watchman Gobie living w 2 Tiger shrimp for the whol 10 yrs. Well the Gobie is 10 the shrimp are about 5 it's is 2nd set. So I wanna keep this tank up! I have BEEN COMPLETELY TURNED AROUND ABOUT HOW TO GO ABOUT IT.....I'm so confuuuuuuzed!
I'm just saying.................
 
I have a well established 120 gallon reef tank with practically no sand. Would it be wise to add 60 pounds of Live Sand today and another 60 pounds of Live Sand next week?

Thoughts, suggestions, opinions.
 
If the tank is well established then I would suggest leaving the tank alone. Do lots of reading on Deep Sand Beds. If after lots of reading you decide that is how you want to run your tank then you'll probably have a much better understanding of how to proceed.

If you do decide to switch to a Deep Sand Bed, you can get advice from Ron Shimek himself at the Marine Depot forums.
 
What types of sand would you guys recommend for a DSB I have about an inch of 'Live sand'. I was thinking about using a bag of silica sand because its cheaper? Would silica sand work alright? I have some silica sand in FW tank but I have some diatom algae problems with it because of the silicates. Would this apply in a SW tank as well? Should I just fork out the money and get a few more bags of Live sand?
 
Aragonite substrate was my choice. My DSB is 10 yrs young and never replaced it but do reseed it with detrivore pkgs from Inland aquatics. You want to read the thread on DSB. you have to decide why you want one and then should only keep animals that will keep the bed healthy and alive.
 
A few thoughts.

Sand beds do add complexity and for some it's welcome; for others not. Maintaining a bed can be fun but it can get very messy even with excellent husbandry over time. Limiting the animals you keep for fear they might disturb the bed or advocating heavy feeding for the bed which will lead to higher nutrient levels than might be healthy for some desireable corals are examples of how they can be limiting. Honestly, if you like a tank with deep sand and worms and macro algaes with a few leathers and mushrooms perhaps a physogrya , euphillia or caulastrea, it's a nice technique for several years.
The picture of diversity and balance in the critters and benthic fauna and micro fuana often painted for sand beds is a complex reality to achieve and given the nature of things even sand critters to compete for dominance , I don't think it can be maintained without relatively frequent replenishment.

Dismissive remarks about hydrogen sulfide such as:

it oxidizes quickly and is not a concern;

or, well, if it is actually harmful, then you need to contain it by not allowing a disturbance to the bed and be careful about what animals you keep avoiding any that might disturb the bed;

and then if it still casues a problem ;just blame poor husbandry;

beg the question as to why anyone would wan't anoxic areas in the sedimdent with sulfate reducing bacteria producing toxic hydrogen sulfide in the first place.

Mistatements about sand clumping only occuring with ph swings are simplistic and fail to account for this common phenomenon which occurs from a variety of chemical and bilogical activity and can clog beds.

Pretending granulated activated carbon can extract all released free metals is a safety net with a big hole in it , since it won't.

A 6 sqaure foot minimum footprint makes no sense at all to me. Think about it does 2 sqaure feet vs 6 square feet of tank vs the square footage of ocean sands make a difference.

Sand beds are nice but they can go bad and often do over a period of years, particularly without reseeding or replenishment . When they do tanks can crash suddenly. The only poor husbandry involved in most cases is likely keeping a bed too long or dismissing the real dangers from old beds too lightly.




Paul's humor is not only funny but often very relevant.
 
bderos said:
I have a well established 120 gallon reef tank with practically no sand. Would it be wise to add 60 pounds of Live Sand today and another 60 pounds of Live Sand next week?

Thoughts, suggestions, opinions.
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You would be fine adding the 60lbs of sand but I would use dry washed argonite--not the live stuff.
I cup from a used base is all you need to seed the new sand base and you don't get all the die off etc in the live sand for your tank to have to contend with.
I would limit to 60 lbs which should give you about and inch sand bed---easy to maintain yet functional for most inverts and fish that use it in some way or another.
 
I went into my local marine shop today and they had a display tank with a visible sump tank full of miracle mud? and also there was a sign saying the sump was full of this mud stuff and caulerpa and that using a protein skimmer with this would starve the caulerpa? is this true, i thought all systems needed a protein skimmer?
 
vejita said:
I went into my local marine shop today and they had a display tank with a visible sump tank full of miracle mud? and also there was a sign saying the sump was full of this mud stuff and caulerpa and that using a protein skimmer with this would starve the caulerpa? is this true, i thought all systems needed a protein skimmer?
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[welcome]

What you are noticing is a refugium that is built within the sump.
The refugium provides a place for copopods and other critters to grow--these feed your fish in your display tank
Growing caulerpa will absorb nitrates and phosphates from the system===these are the fuel for algae in the display tank. When these are kept very low so is the algae

The sump itself just provides a place to put equipment that normally would hang all over the display tank, It also has many other benifits to the system

That said
A protein skimmer is very very affective as a filter----I would chose that far over miracle mud
A protein skimmer does reduce some nitrates and phosphates but never enough to compete with a thriving refugium

I personally would not run a refugium with miracle mud
If I was to set up a refugium with miracle mud then I would layer it between two layers of medium argonite so it didn't mess up my system

I would use cheato algae rather then caulerpa

Effective filtration
Live rock--the best for removing nitrates out of the system
A protein skimmer---removes ammonia compounds etc
A refugium---as stated above
A deep sand bed
Carbon reactor===a must if you have corals esp softies and lps
 
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