DSB in a bucket for nitrate control

cheato actually doesnt seem to be growing, I had it on a 24/7 lighting and just a few weeks ago set it to a reverse light cycle. I was thinking of adding some calurpa. Skimmer skims very well.

I blow off the rocks every water change, and nothing more then usuall "dust" comes off
 
DSB.jpg






Thoughts on this please....

Thanks
 
It needs to go to skimmer then to dsb. The main point is to avoid any detritus getting into the sand which would become a nitrate factory.


Mark
 
I just added 250 pounds of pulverized limestone into a 50 gallon basket. This is for my 175 gallon reef tank, and my question is how much flow do I want across it? I have around 500 gph over it now, is that too much?
 
You want enough flow so basically nothing is settling on the sand. Hard to say if 500 gph is enough with out knowing the dimensions of the basket. Maybe a spray bar would help disperse the flow evenly.
 
"Fort-Pak"

i almost used mine. it will work fine if you are careful to engineer it. the plus is the screw threads allows you to put a nipple on the lid.
 
So when comparing the RDSB to a Fuge does this make a fuge not needed anymore. Im not talking about the growing of pods and other little creatures for your tank. Im strictly talking about the consumption of the "bad" stuff....Yes that is technical talk!!
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8400061#post8400061 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EnderG60
cheato actually doesnt seem to be growing, I had it on a 24/7 lighting and just a few weeks ago set it to a reverse light cycle. I was thinking of adding some calurpa. Skimmer skims very well.

I blow off the rocks every water change, and nothing more then usuall "dust" comes off
Click to expand...
What sand did you use for your RDSB? Was it very fine, fine, medium, coarse???
 
Depending how much crushed coral you have mixed in and how coarse the sand is will make a big difference, If it not fine enough then you won't have an anaerobic area needed to process the nitrates. DSB required fine sand to function, I don't see where this would be any different.
This may or may not be your problem.
EDIT: I tried finding an old article by R Shimek but had no luck, In the article he talk about the size of the substrate needed for a deep sand bed to function, Anyone else know where to find that information?

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8432718#post8432718 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EnderG60
its pretty fine, not quite sugar fine, with some crushed shells mixed in
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Just want to start off by saying thank you all for this HUGE amount of amazing info.


This is for my 2000g total volume sysytem.

ok working on finishing the sump here is my finished remote dsb
CIMG0670_edited.jpg


its a portion of my 240 sump about 75G is made of black acyrlic to stop any light from getting in. Will fill with aragonite sand to help with filtration and maybe a bit of buffering

DIY spray bar out of one in pvc

CIMG0696_edited.jpg



back of the sump with the lines coming from sump to RDSB a Phosban Reactor will be inline here
CIMG0697_edited.jpg





finished spraybar in sump


CIMG0700_edited.jpg


There is a hole on there end of the RDSB to flow back into the sump

What do you guys think?

I don't want to take away from the thread of being in a bucket.
please if you have any questions or comments here is my build thread:


http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=8463839#post8463839
 
So after reading this about rdsb, i could use silica beach sand around 15" deep, with no risk of hydrogen sulfide seepage?
 
week 13

trates are still in the 30-40 range, no clue whats going on but im done with this bucket. It has been disconnected and im dumping it out.

I may try it again later but im just gonna leave it off for a while and see what happens.
 
Interesting thread

A simple solution to a common problem, I like it. Thanks Anthony.

DSB Saturation

I noticed a couple of people talking about the sand replacement cycle. Having gone through the “dead” in-tank DSB fiasco myself I’m not taking any chances. I have 12 1 gal RDSBs. On my current schedule it takes three years to replace all the sand. I saw a couple of comments that said if macro fauna doesn’t get into the RDSB it should last forever. That’s too many ifs for me. I just don’t see how you can prevent macro fauna from getting into the RDSB. “Nature will find a way.” I guess if you detect a RDSB saturation problem early enough (~4 mos.) you can always bring a second RDSB in a bucket on line. Otherwise, you are going to lose 100% of your denitrification capacity all at once. For those of you who are planning on replacing the sand, what replacement period do you like?

DSBs and Phosphate Export

The other issue I’ve seen discussed that I’m concerned about is phosphate export. Remoting our DSBs doesn’t change this. I’m guessing the Redfield (red something) ratio holds for the bacteria in the DSB. Perhaps that explains why DSBs don’t cause phosphates to climb until they are saturated with bacteria. It seems like you would want to change the sand out at this point anyway. It will be interesting to see what happens in tanks with these new turbo charged RDSBs and macro algae. Are macro algae pointless if you have an unsaturated (viable) DSB?

Cycle Time

I don’t understand the comments about it taking weeks for the RDSBs to cycle. It takes months for in-tank DSBs to grow enough bacteria to keep up with typical bio-loads. Am I missing something?

FWIW - My RDSB

I have 180 lbs of sugar fine aragonite sand in a 7” deep RDSB servicing a 170 display tank. I would have gone deeper but didn’t have room. The RDSB is not exposed to light. It has 2K GPH water flow over it. Nitrates are undetectable.There are pics in the 160 Room Divider album in my gallery.

I tore down my five year old unsustainable 5" in-tank DSB about a year ago and replaced it with a 7” deep RDSB. I filled it with half aged sand from old DSB and half new (all sugar fine) sand. Nitrates peaked at 20 ppm about two months later. Nitrates dropped to undetectable two months after that. In other words, it performs like an in-tank DSB.
 
Update: My RDSB of ~25 gallons of sand on a 200 gallon FOWLR system has been initially positive (about 5 weeks old to 9 weeks old) but now nitrate levels have begun to rise again. I was forced to use water changes to bring them back down. This was after checking every other part of the tank/filtration for "nitrate factories". No other fish added/removed. Did tweak skimmer to feed directly from overflow which helped amount of skimmate produced greatly....

Then I began to think....to do a DSB of say 6" of sand on a 200 gallon tank is what....~50 gallons of sand on most tanks?? I would think that the size of the RDSB would have to be similarly sized to have a longterm effect.

I have however introduced a significant amount of macroalgae (chaeto) with some 5500K light. With a pair of clamp lamps with 120w compact flourescent bulbs growth has been excellent. That combined with the RDSB has helped with the nitrate issue. Still, I'm not sure its enough for a FOWLR longterm. I would think a RDSB fuge is an excellent supplement to a sulphur denitrator (such as the koralin or esp the midwest aquatic) or even a properly sized coil denitrator (very DIY-able). Overall I'm sure that the capacity of a RDSB and/or fuge would be completely adequate for a reef like bioload.

Still, the current setup still extends intervals between water changes....
 
just set up remote DSB today, I only used a 5 gallon bucket for now since I could not find a better sized container anywhere today....I will get some pics soon, as well as report how well this drops my nitrates on a 120....The nitrates currently are around 30ppm. I really hope it helps this is driving me nuts.
 
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