DSB Heresy
- Thread starter ldrhawke
- Start date
Turtlesteve said:
Steve,
Sorry I just noted I didn't answer your questions.
If you look at the Theil study and how the waste concentrates in the plenum over time, which I believe also happens in any DSB w/ or wo a plenum, any method that removes that contaminated fluid deep in the bed is better than none.
I do think for long term success it would be better to design a plenum system that worked effective in removing fluid more uniformly across the bed. This is best done by starting from scratch and rebuilding the tank substrate.
Dripping is not as effective as a periodic flush. The flush will better assure of a more uniform fluid differential pressure across the bed and a more even removal of what is building up in the bed.
Shoestring Reefer
New member
If anyone hasn't checked out ldrhawke's web site (below his avatar) you should. Overall, one of the better sites I've seen.
I think his idea for tank filtration has merit; it is the logic behind it, and long-term stability, that I would like to see validated.
I think his idea for tank filtration has merit; it is the logic behind it, and long-term stability, that I would like to see validated.
Algae Blenny
New member
So this is sort-of a constant, small, stable water change and almost a Protein Skimmer for your sand-bed. I like this idea, and I believe it has no risk, I would have used it if I was starting my tank now.
Adam
New member
ldrhawk,
I like the general idea, but your recently dropping ORP raises concerns.
It makes alot of sense that the ORP would initially rise by removing the lowest ORP material from the tank (and possible limiting sulfur reduction).
The recent fall in ORP suggests that some other change has occured in the way that things are being processed.
Any thoughts?
Adam
I like the general idea, but your recently dropping ORP raises concerns.
It makes alot of sense that the ORP would initially rise by removing the lowest ORP material from the tank (and possible limiting sulfur reduction).
The recent fall in ORP suggests that some other change has occured in the way that things are being processed.
Any thoughts?
Adam
Adam
New member
Increasing the mechanical safety of the system
Increasing the mechanical safety of the system
Hi all,
I put this in a seperate post since it has a totally different point.
There was some early discussion about redundant solenoid valves and mechanically compled overflow/standpipe systems to make this system "drain safe".
It would be quite a bit more simple and elegant to direct the waste into an appropriately sized (an ordinary 1 gal milk jug for example) container placed in the sump. Any amount in excess of 1 gallon would simply overflow into the sump.
I really think that this is the least of the issues related to this idea. I personally can't see why such a simple chore should be automated. I just posted this since the concept may have application elsewhere as well as here.
And Shoestring and ldrhawk.... I would prefer that you increase my notariety by referring to this design as "The Cesnales flood eliminator device" from now on
Adam
Increasing the mechanical safety of the system
Hi all,
I put this in a seperate post since it has a totally different point.
There was some early discussion about redundant solenoid valves and mechanically compled overflow/standpipe systems to make this system "drain safe".
It would be quite a bit more simple and elegant to direct the waste into an appropriately sized (an ordinary 1 gal milk jug for example) container placed in the sump. Any amount in excess of 1 gallon would simply overflow into the sump.
I really think that this is the least of the issues related to this idea. I personally can't see why such a simple chore should be automated. I just posted this since the concept may have application elsewhere as well as here.
And Shoestring and ldrhawk.... I would prefer that you increase my notariety by referring to this design as "The Cesnales flood eliminator device" from now on
Adam
Re: Increasing the mechanical safety of the system
Re: Increasing the mechanical safety of the system
If you read some of my early posts that is exactly what I have been doing for months to collect samples. I have a gallon jug sitting in a plastic pan that over flows into the sump.
Sorry, day late and dollar short.... NO.."The Cesnales flood eliminator device" :lol:
Re: Increasing the mechanical safety of the system
Adam said:Hi all,
It would be quite a bit more simple and elegant to direct the waste into an appropriately sized (an ordinary 1 gal milk jug for example) container placed in the sump. Any amount in excess of 1 gallon would simply overflow into the sump.
... I would prefer that you increase my notariety by referring to this design as "The Cesnales flood eliminator device" from now on
Adam
If you read some of my early posts that is exactly what I have been doing for months to collect samples. I have a gallon jug sitting in a plastic pan that over flows into the sump.
Sorry, day late and dollar short.... NO.."The Cesnales flood eliminator device" :lol:
Shoestring Reefer
New member
My thoughts:Adam said:
It may be a short-lived trend, and bounce back up; be fixed by adjusting flow (as he suggested may happen, I think), or be totally unrelated. If a few other tanks get set up like this, we can know better.
The worst thing that can happen for this (or any) idea is for the tank to go bad for some totally unrelated issue, and be discredited.
Adam said:
if you use an ORP meter you would know they continuously are changing. Feeding drops it 20 to 40 points. Add back a small amount of stagnant water back into the tank and it will drop 100 points.
If I stop CPW the ORP steadily declines. CPW has already increased it well above where it has ever been before.
All it is indicating to me is that the very small amount I have been removing, compared to my regular weekly 15% water changes, may need to be increased to have long term stability.
"It would be quite a bit more simple and elegant to direct the waste into an appropriately sized (an ordinary 1 gal milk jug for example) container placed in the sump. Any amount in excess of 1 gallon would simply overflow into the sump"
This is what I've always done with skimmate. I dont want a fluke skimmer burp to flood the house.
Sorry, though, not putting your name on it
Shoestring,
Props for staying with the topic after some of the previous statements. A gentleman.
I think this is going somewhere, but definitely needs further analysis, espescially on a per tank basis where feeding and stocking rates are much different.
Chris
This is what I've always done with skimmate. I dont want a fluke skimmer burp to flood the house.
Sorry, though, not putting your name on it
Shoestring,
Props for staying with the topic after some of the previous statements. A gentleman.
I think this is going somewhere, but definitely needs further analysis, espescially on a per tank basis where feeding and stocking rates are much different.
Chris
Shoestring Reefer
New member
H2OENG-
I'll make keeping at it a new year's resolution.
I'll make keeping at it a new year's resolution.
ldrhawke,
I would like to volunteer to be a guinea pig for your CPW method. In the next month or so, I will be setting up a new 90 gal RR and transferring the livestock and LR from my current 75 gal tank. It has a 4" DSB with sugar sized aragonite. In general I'm happy with my DSB, and I don't think it has crashed yet (1.5 yrs old). My major gripes at this point are the on-going cost (it needs a detrivore recharge) and the fine sand that is constantly being dug up and blown about. Also I would like to keep some of the animals that are no-nos for DSBs (blennies, starfish, etc). One other thing that's probably a bigger issue than I think, I'm OK with the DSB's appearance on the sides, but my wife hates it.
Until I read this thread, I was planning on going with a 1-2" CaribSea Reef Sand (1.0-1.7mm) bed in the new tank with a mud-based refugium. I would be willing to forego the mud if you would rather see the results of CPW without combining it with other methods.
I have a few questions/ideas I would like to get your feedback on:
1. You mentioned earlier in the thread that you had more info on building the plenum PVC grid correctly. Can you provide the details? What material do you recommend for screening the holes?
2. What detrivores should I seed the new bed with? Any problem with using a small amount of fine sand from the old tank?
3. Instead of siphoning water from the plenum, I was thinking of using a small timer-controlled pump. Using a restrictor valve, it would be possible to set different surge strengths.
4. I was planning to use 3 or 4 power heads that would come on briefly at regular intervals to stir up detrius from the bed. What do you think about programming these to come on just before the waste surge to minimize the amount of detritus that would be sucked into the bed?
5. What parameters would you like to see measured in the water column and/or waste water?
6. Do you know of any fairly inexpensive timers that could be used in place of a PC? I think requiring a PC might be the biggest obstacle for widespread acceptance.
Thanks,
Darrell
I would like to volunteer to be a guinea pig for your CPW method. In the next month or so, I will be setting up a new 90 gal RR and transferring the livestock and LR from my current 75 gal tank. It has a 4" DSB with sugar sized aragonite. In general I'm happy with my DSB, and I don't think it has crashed yet (1.5 yrs old). My major gripes at this point are the on-going cost (it needs a detrivore recharge) and the fine sand that is constantly being dug up and blown about. Also I would like to keep some of the animals that are no-nos for DSBs (blennies, starfish, etc). One other thing that's probably a bigger issue than I think, I'm OK with the DSB's appearance on the sides, but my wife hates it.
Until I read this thread, I was planning on going with a 1-2" CaribSea Reef Sand (1.0-1.7mm) bed in the new tank with a mud-based refugium. I would be willing to forego the mud if you would rather see the results of CPW without combining it with other methods.
I have a few questions/ideas I would like to get your feedback on:
1. You mentioned earlier in the thread that you had more info on building the plenum PVC grid correctly. Can you provide the details? What material do you recommend for screening the holes?
2. What detrivores should I seed the new bed with? Any problem with using a small amount of fine sand from the old tank?
3. Instead of siphoning water from the plenum, I was thinking of using a small timer-controlled pump. Using a restrictor valve, it would be possible to set different surge strengths.
4. I was planning to use 3 or 4 power heads that would come on briefly at regular intervals to stir up detrius from the bed. What do you think about programming these to come on just before the waste surge to minimize the amount of detritus that would be sucked into the bed?
5. What parameters would you like to see measured in the water column and/or waste water?
6. Do you know of any fairly inexpensive timers that could be used in place of a PC? I think requiring a PC might be the biggest obstacle for widespread acceptance.
Thanks,
Darrell
Very interesting.......I've been reading all I can on filtration for the last two months and had decided to build a plenum/DSB system. The idea of draining small amounts of the plenum water appealed to me, even though I could find no real info/data on doing so. I thought maybe I was just "being the engineer!"
I will be setting up a 225 gal tank in the next few months, hopefully by summer. I did have a couple of questions for you, Idrhawke.....
How deep is your crushed coral, and is all your sand above this CaribeSea Special Grade Levlor, or whatever? I had though that I would build a 1-1/2" plenum topped with 2" of crushed coral (5mm +/-) and then 2 - 3" of CaribeSea sand (1-3 mm =/-). Is this similar to what you have setup? Do I even need the CC? Several articles I have read regarding plenums recommend just using the medium grade arogaonite sand for the entire 4 - 5 ".
Thanks for the info.
I will be setting up a 225 gal tank in the next few months, hopefully by summer. I did have a couple of questions for you, Idrhawke.....
How deep is your crushed coral, and is all your sand above this CaribeSea Special Grade Levlor, or whatever? I had though that I would build a 1-1/2" plenum topped with 2" of crushed coral (5mm +/-) and then 2 - 3" of CaribeSea sand (1-3 mm =/-). Is this similar to what you have setup? Do I even need the CC? Several articles I have read regarding plenums recommend just using the medium grade arogaonite sand for the entire 4 - 5 ".
Thanks for the info.
I love threads that make me go and read other stuff to figure out what makes sense.
I came across this link in another post that I think has relevance here.
Coupled with some comments about sandbeds by Eric Borneman in this thread (page 2), it supports the hypothesis being put forward in this thread.
Essentially the fine sand beds we set up act in a similar manner to seagrass beds with their biodiversity, food generation for reefs and nutrient processing. The first article suggests that without regular flushing, in this case in Florida bay, we get excess nutrients and a system crash.
Interstingly, Eric does not like the idea of keeping his "seagrass" area in the same tank as his reef and thinks there is a good reason why reefs are not co-located directly next to seagrass beds.
Fred.
I came across this link in another post that I think has relevance here.
Coupled with some comments about sandbeds by Eric Borneman in this thread (page 2), it supports the hypothesis being put forward in this thread.
Essentially the fine sand beds we set up act in a similar manner to seagrass beds with their biodiversity, food generation for reefs and nutrient processing. The first article suggests that without regular flushing, in this case in Florida bay, we get excess nutrients and a system crash.
Interstingly, Eric does not like the idea of keeping his "seagrass" area in the same tank as his reef and thinks there is a good reason why reefs are not co-located directly next to seagrass beds.
Fred.
sambo said:
It is all Carib Sea Special Grade Sand and about 3 to 4" deep. It is important to maintain pore space to allow flow. If it is too dense, like sugar sand, detritus will block and fill in the small pores very rapidly plugging up large areas and keep then totally anoxic and useless because little food will be moved through it to feed the bacteria. Sugar sand does have more surface area, as Dr. Ron states, but it does little good if the bacteria is starved.
Fredfish said:
This is exactly why Bomber and others have gone back to a BB tanks. I just feel that it may be possible to make DSB's work better by using CPW and maintain the positive aspects of what comes with more biological surface area, using the fact that they accumulate waste to our advantage.
Only time will tell if my CPW concept can do this. Right now I have no doubt that CPW will at least extend the life of DSBs, hopefully indefinitely.
A positive response already
A positive response already
I am happy to report, that after less than 2 days of using an increased CPW wasting rate of a gallon per day, my ORP is again moving back toward the 400 mv goal without the aid of ozone.:rollface:
The positive water quality response is much quicker that I anticipated.
A positive response already
I am happy to report, that after less than 2 days of using an increased CPW wasting rate of a gallon per day, my ORP is again moving back toward the 400 mv goal without the aid of ozone.:rollface:
The positive water quality response is much quicker that I anticipated.
I may have over complicated CPW (Controlled Plenum Wasting) for many reading my automated description. Let me try an make it very simple to understand and build.
Any one that reads the Theil report ( http://www.athiel.com/lib2/noplenum.htm) will agree waste concentrates in the plenum and builds up. There is no logical reason to believe the same thing is not happening in any DSB, with or without a plenum.
If after reading Theils report and his data you do not feel the waste that builds up in a tanks substrate is a very real problem......don't read any further.
The purpose of CPW can be explained with three statements.
1. Flush the bottom of your tank periodically to remove the waste that concentrates there.
2. Build a plenum drain system that does that effectively
Automating the process, making it more efficient, making it remove waste more uniformly, etc, etc is all secondary.
A CPW plenum system can be built out of 1/2 " pvc pipe from Home Depot or your local hardware store for less than $20.00*. You are just laying out a grid of pvc pipe using as much pipe as you can squeeze into the bottom. It is connected with elbows, caps, crosses, or Tees, and a few valves to isolate and shut it off, so you have a single outlet to drain the grid through.
It is important to minimize short circuiting. Keep the size of the drain holes small. Use a 1/32" drill bit and a drill a single hole in the pipe keeping them about 2 inches apart. Wrap the piping grid with drainage cloth (also available at Home Depot in the garden dept.), to keep substrate from blocking the holes.
Using two elbows and a few lengths of pipe you can run the discharge line up and over the top of your tank to make a siphon. Your do not even need to drill a whole in the bottom of the tank.
You will need to Tee it into your recirculation system to initially prime and flush the air out of the line so it will start the siphon.
Cover it with a coarse sunstrate to allow uniform flow though the bed.
Good luck.
NO..... I DONââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢T WORK FOR HOME DEPOT:lol:
Any one that reads the Theil report ( http://www.athiel.com/lib2/noplenum.htm) will agree waste concentrates in the plenum and builds up. There is no logical reason to believe the same thing is not happening in any DSB, with or without a plenum.
If after reading Theils report and his data you do not feel the waste that builds up in a tanks substrate is a very real problem......don't read any further.
The purpose of CPW can be explained with three statements.
1. Flush the bottom of your tank periodically to remove the waste that concentrates there.
2. Build a plenum drain system that does that effectively
Automating the process, making it more efficient, making it remove waste more uniformly, etc, etc is all secondary.
A CPW plenum system can be built out of 1/2 " pvc pipe from Home Depot or your local hardware store for less than $20.00*. You are just laying out a grid of pvc pipe using as much pipe as you can squeeze into the bottom. It is connected with elbows, caps, crosses, or Tees, and a few valves to isolate and shut it off, so you have a single outlet to drain the grid through.
It is important to minimize short circuiting. Keep the size of the drain holes small. Use a 1/32" drill bit and a drill a single hole in the pipe keeping them about 2 inches apart. Wrap the piping grid with drainage cloth (also available at Home Depot in the garden dept.), to keep substrate from blocking the holes.
Using two elbows and a few lengths of pipe you can run the discharge line up and over the top of your tank to make a siphon. Your do not even need to drill a whole in the bottom of the tank.
You will need to Tee it into your recirculation system to initially prime and flush the air out of the line so it will start the siphon.
Cover it with a coarse sunstrate to allow uniform flow though the bed.
Good luck.
NO..... I DONââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢T WORK FOR HOME DEPOT:lol:
BORECKI
New member
idrhawke ;
I am thinking that there might be some benifit by laying eggcrate over the 1/2 inch pips and placing the fabric over the eggcrate. That would creat a true plenium over the entire bottom of the tank as opposed to making a complex grid of pipes individualy wraped in fabric.
One other concern I am thinking about is that the sand grains will shrink in size over time(just like in a standard DSB) and this will still need to be addressed.
Boris.
I am thinking that there might be some benifit by laying eggcrate over the 1/2 inch pips and placing the fabric over the eggcrate. That would creat a true plenium over the entire bottom of the tank as opposed to making a complex grid of pipes individualy wraped in fabric.
One other concern I am thinking about is that the sand grains will shrink in size over time(just like in a standard DSB) and this will still need to be addressed.
Boris.
Shoestring Reefer
New member
That sounds like it may be a little easier to set up. You wouldn't need as much pipe with as many holes, for example, because the water from the bed would be drawn into the plenum, instead of the pipe.BORECKI said:
