DSB Question?

[elegance coral]

I've been trying to stay out of this conversation, but the quote below is utterly ridiculous.

And please read Ron Shimek's article:
Problems:
More imagined than real problems bedevil keepers of sand beds. The imagined problems are proposed by people who are ignorant of the sand bed dynamics. Among these imaginary problems are accumulations of hydrogen sulfide and detritus, and the need for sifting.

The problems are not imagined, they are quite real, and the idea that detritus won't accumulate in these sand beds is complete nonsense. Talk to one of the countless people that have removed one of these sand beds, and they'll tell you about the rotten egg smell that overwhelmed them. The production of hydrogen sulfide becomes a reality as well.

He's calling people ignorant, but the real ignorance here, is when he suggests that you can support hundreds of thousands of detritus eating organisms, while not accumulating, and maintaining massive amounts of detritus. It's physically impossible. This is like saying there are hundreds of thousands of herbivores in the forest, but the plants don't grow, and there's not much vegetation there. The only way to support massive numbers of detritavores, is to provide them with massive amounts of detritus. He can't have it both ways. He can't say he has all these bugs, but no food to feed them.

His articles are simply fairy tails........ All of them. Well, when you think about all the animals his methods have killed, I guess his articles are more like horror stories.

Peace
EC

 

[power boat jim]

And please read Ron Shimek's article:
Problems:
More imagined than real problems bedevil keepers of sand beds. The imagined problems are proposed by people who are ignorant of the sand bed dynamics. Among these imaginary problems are accumulations of hydrogen sulfide and detritus, and the need for sifting.

Sorry Ron, Shimeks theory has at least one huge, inescapable flaw in it. Every living thing on earth creates waste. Even the critters he proposes that live in the sand bed and make detritus magically dissappear. If what he said was true there would be no need for solids/sludge removal at any waste treatment facility. We could just introduce his magic bugs into the system and all the solid waste woud dissappear.

I can assure you that doesnt happen. Though the use of micro organisms can help metabolize waste, there is still plenty of organic material left over that cant be consumed any further. This waste has to be removed. Its not that Im arguing for or against sandbeds, this is just a simple fact that Shimek seems to be ignoring.

 

[herring_fish]

I have posted this before and probably will again. This is just a subjective observation from a Jaubert version of a sand bed that I used. If you don't know what it is and want to know more, you can look at an old article that I wrote but most of what is relevant is in this quote below.
http //asaherring com/reef/sandsetup pdf

....I lowered the front of the bed so that it looked better against the front glass. Critters are suppose to inhabit the top, aerobic zone but nothing gets passed the two screens into the anaerobic zone and the stagnant zones.

I wanted to see into the plenum so before I installed anything, I encased a plasticized magnet in epoxy and placed it on the bottom piece of glass in the tank. The stand that I had, allowed me to look up through the bottom of the tank. In about a month a layer of detritus formed on the bottom glass. In a few months, I put another magnet up to the first one and was able to slowly and carefully drag it around through the sediment. I could see that it was very uniform at about 1/4 inch thick. I only did this one or two more times over 8 years or so. It wasn't too exciting.

When I tore the tank down, I was very careful, like a paleontologist. When I got through the sand beds I looked at the bottom sediment and there was that same depth of 1/4 inch of detritus that formed in the first few months.

It appeared to me that something processed this stuff. The screens are there to keep out critters and there weren't any dead skeletons, shells or any other forms of remains. This led me to think that the last vestiges of detritus must have been falling to the bottom slowly and bacteria was (...well not eating it but) processing it away. The ATS must have been the eventual vehicle for export of detritus byproducts that come from different stages of decomposition.

In nature, on dry land, fecal excrement is not the last stage of nutrient breakdown. Otherwise, we would be buried in it. It is broken down whether it is in the soil or sitting on an abandoned sidewalk. There is always something that lives off of what that last organism left behind. To some degree, this can be done inside of a closed reef system, although removal is far better where possible!!! Never the less, there is a complex food chain going up the latter before food enters a fish's gut. Likewise, there is a complex and little understood chain of organisms that process that food after it leaves the gut. "Dust to dust" and all that?

...[ refering to a standard deep sand bed ]...In a Deep Sand Bed, I would think that whatever is deposited at the bottom is pretty close to inert. In any case, I think that the ticking "nutrient bomb" is much less of a potential problem than many people think. Yes, it is a sink but a very good one. ....