Is a settling tank good for for a reef tank?

[Fredfish]

Though there is only anecdotal evidence, I think you are right.

Subsea. You mentioned in your other thread that you have never bought Miracle Mud, but you run a filter. Did you DIY the mud portion? If so, what ingredients did you use?

Living in the middle of a continent, it's rather hard for me to just go grab some mud from the seashore.

 

[Subsea]

Though there is only anecdotal evidence, I think you are right.

Subsea. You mentioned in your other thread that you have never bought Miracle Mud, but you run a filter. Did you DIY the mud portion? If so, what ingredients did you use?

Living in the middle of a continent, it's rather hard for me to just go grab some mud from the seashore.

I purchased a mature 75G tank with an 30G ecosystem mud filter. I operated the system for ten years with zero mud replacement. During those ten years detritus accumulated with the depth increasing from 3/4" to 1"+. The mud felt spongy to the touch and was crawling with worms. Early this summer, because of an infestation of red planaria, I removed refugium from system. Everything was bleached and mud was thrown away. There are several reputable options including FORM (funky old reef mud). I also included a fresh water substrate from Seachem that is high in iron. Iron is vital to bacteria, macro and coral.

 

[Subsea]

yes. I think MM provides different benefits.. dosing missing elements + creating a hospitable environment for fauna + precipitating phosphates + neutralizing nitrates + creating a food supply in the form for fauna plankton.

combining it with a detritus capturing settling tank may be a way to actively feed the machine

Please explain how "magic mud" precipitates phosphates.

To my knowledge, dosing limewater precipitates phosphate in the form of calcium phosphate. This is often why cynobacteria proliferate with no phosphate in the water column.

 

[Subsea]

Actively precipitate phosphates to close the nitrogen cycle to N2 gas.

What does close the nitrogen cycle to N2 gas mean?

With respect to denitrification, it is faculative bacteria and reduction chemistry that completes the nitrogen cycle to be removed as a free gas. I see no connection to phosphate precipitation.

 

[karimwassef]

they're two separate mechanisms. The theory is that the high iron in the MM precipitates phosphate. The depth of the mud allows denitrification in the anaerobic zones.

There's lots of debate around how MM works (or if it does)... I'm just listing the potential mechanisms

 

[dartier]

This thread is circling around some topics that are near and dear to me. Not that I use or am thinking of using Miracle Mud (I am not), but in relation to phosphate precipitation.

I am at the beginning of a filtration build styled after the DyMiCo units. For the uninitiated, they are kind of a sand bed meets denitrification meets calcium reactor all in one using a controller. The filter should take care of the nitrate and Alk/Calcium, but I am left to deal with the phosphate using other means.

For this I plan to dose Iron Citrate. GlennF from the DSR technique has been using Iron Citrate to lower phosphate in the form of precipitated Iron Phosphate . Where I am struggling is deciding where to best apply the iron citrate. As I will not have a skimmer since these filters best known for generating water column plankton, exporting the precipitated iron phosphate in skimmate is out. One thing that I was thinking of doing is dosing the iron citrate directly into the anaerobic portion of the filter. The citrate is a carbon source and as I will be dosing carbon to power the denitrification, I should be able to substitute some of the normal carbon with the iron citrate.

This would leave precipitated iron phosphate in the lower portion of the filter, or at least I think it will. Do I ignore it and wait to export it until topping up the coarse media every couple of years that gets dissolved, or do I install a flush system into the bottom of the filter so that accumulated precipitate can be removed without tearing the filter apart? For that matter I am wondering how inert the iron phosphate will be and is there any danger of it getting re-introduced to the water column either through dissolving along with the calcium carbonate media or through bacterial action.

I may just have to take a wait and see attitude.

Dennis

 

[vincel892]

Sorry to revive this thread, but any idea if a bean animal overflow would work on this type of mechanical filtration? My idea is to have bean animal drain from DT to a settling chamber (radial flow or swirl filter) and then to the below tank sump. Wondering if the plumbing would allow the full siphon to purge air from the line after a power outage and if water draining from the settling chamber into the main sump would be too loud and therefore defeat the whole purpose of a bean animal to begin with.

 

[docdubz]

As I will not have a skimmer since these filters best known for generating water column plankton

I'm getting back into reefing after a prolonged hiatus. Would you happen to have a link handy so I could read up on this method? How would you compare this to the Berlin method (which I had beautiful success with in the past)?

 

[karimwassef]

the overflow mechanism and the settling mechanism are separate. You can mix and match and bean should work with a settling tank.

 

[coralcruze2020]

Interesting idea... has anyone devised a more automated way of removing detritus from such a system? I would imagine a drain at the bottom of a tank might do this well.