LFS with attitude

[luminary]

And actually, I meant research about the natural conditions for soft corals and their preferred locations (and reasons for) on the reef.

 

[ReefArtist]

I agree aesthetics aside the bottom line is what is healthy for the livestock. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an artist and engineer so the feel and look of my tank is very important. But I think we can come up with designs that look like sand but over all will the beings that use this be happy? It appears we have a lot choose from:
We can choose to limit our selection of livestock and go totally barebottom.
Choose the livestock that you like but have the minimum requirement of proper substrate.
Have the middle of the road amount of substrate â€"œ not bare but not DSB five to six inches (This is where my tank falls at this time).
Have the DSB that is I think 5 or 6+ inches â€"œ some people have not had a problem â€"œ why?
Come up with a completely new solution â€"œ DSB bucket approach or possibly something totally new.
It is very interesting were the LPS and SPS are found in abundance within reefs. How the nutrients flow and above all what type of nutrients. In a large reef tank that has an abundance of LPS and SPS specimens would it be wise to design your tank so that the heavy feeders are on the one side and go to fewer feeders and have the water flow so that all the food flows back to the heavy feeders? I guess I’m thinking out loud â€"œ this could get me into trouble.
Yes Matt you are being picky I’m sure you have your reasons.

 

[ladyfsu]

ReefArtist I pm'd you because I don't want to take over the thread ...I have a habit of doing that (I like to talk about me ). Yes, the wish list is up to date.

Like MikeBrk said, I like all the critters in the sand. Maybe this could be something we could do at a meeting with some of your sand (I'd bring some microscopes), but what we did yesterday in class is we got a plasic eye dropper and sucked up about 3 dropper fulls of water from just above the sand bed and looked at all the different organisms. We found 4 of these worms with 8 tentacles that are constantly feeding themselves and move like an inch worm, flat worms, bristle worms and some worms I can't identify. There must have been about 30 copepods and other pods too. I like knowing all of these are taking care of my tank.

For me, it's just a personal preference. I'd rather do more water changes so I can keep my cool "bugs" in the sand.

 

[DaddyJax]

http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/39/1/66
This is a pdf download. It takes a few seconds.

 

[ReefArtist]

That's were we need to choose the type of livestock and bottom line our personal preferences. This is one of the points luminary made in the very beginning to me. If I’m going to keep livestock that requires sand then I need to provide it, regardless if I feel it’s the best biologically or not. I’m just going to have to work harder at keeping my tank balanced and my fish healthy. My tank is at the stage that I can make some design changes if I feel they are warranted. This has really opened my eyes as far as purchases of LPS and SPS. The placement is going to be very important factors for their utmost health.

 

[MikeBrke]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8197617#post8197617 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by luminary
I've also never seen one with 4 glass walls . I have however seen flourishing reefs hundreds of feet wide with only sand on the outside. Think of a barebottom tank as being similiar to a reef crest. There are plenty of examples in the ocean of a reef with no sand anywhere near. Can you tell there's no sand in the tank? Of course. Once the bottom gets covered with coraline it's really not noticable.

<p>Well, the reason you have never seen a real natural reef with four glass walls around it because it is just that, a real reef. Real reef's "glass walls" are only limited to the weather and temperature conditions of the region. So the connection you made between comparing a natural reef (with four glass walls around it) and an aquarium reef with no (sand in it), is spurious. Reefs are not trying to recreate aquariums, aquariums are trying to recreate reefs.

Also, I am having a hard time finding any information on reef crests without "any sand near." Surely, where there is a reef, and for that matter, an ocean, there is a substrate. Wheter it be made of sand, rocks (with sand between), or whatever, it is never a bare bottom. However, if I am wrong please point me in the right direction of correct information.

 

[ReefArtist]

I have been reading about different types of substrates one being hard bottom like the Pulley Ridge reef in the gulf. The question is will that equate to bare bottom in the aquarium? Need to do more research!

 

[playa0069u]

Thanks reef artist for trying to help...

 

[luminary]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8199057#post8199057 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MikeBrke
<p>Well, the reason you have never seen a real natural reef with four glass walls around it because it is just that, a real reef. Real reef's "glass walls" are only limited to the weather and temperature conditions of the region. So the connection you made between comparing a natural reef (with four glass walls around it) and an aquarium reef with no (sand in it), is spurious. Reefs are not trying to recreate aquariums, aquariums are trying to recreate reefs.

You said you've never seen a reef without a sandbed. Which suggests that because there is sand on the reef, then sand belongs in our tanks. There is no basis for that assumption, which was the heart of my, admitedly snide, comment. The fact that the the wild reef is an open system and our aquariums are closed systems suggests that there is no direct correlation between keeping an aquarium and the ecological processes that occur in the wild. There are far more processes at work on a real reef than we can recreate in our tanks. The problems that are created by a deep sand bed in an aquarium do not exist in the ocean because there are other processes that deal with them that we cannot recreate.

For example, the rapid water flow across a reef is instrumental in removing nutrients before they can build up. They are then moved to other areas of the ocean where they are handled (areas such as lagoons, large sand flats, or via foam fractionation from breaking waves...all places where the reef is not involved). This current keeps those nutrients from building up on the reef. Given that scenario, the removal of waste in a closed reef system that does not have all of these areas available is best done by rapid flow and the quick removal of waste, which is the premise on which bare bottom systems are based and is not a function of a deep sand bed.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8199057#post8199057 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MikeBrke
Also, I am having a hard time finding any information on reef crests without "any sand near." Surely, where there is a reef, and for that matter, an ocean, there is a substrate. Wheter it be made of sand, rocks (with sand between), or whatever, it is never a bare bottom. However, if I am wrong please point me in the right direction of correct information.

"near" is obviously a relative term when we're talking about the ocean. But if you want to compare the localized environment of an aquarium to the reef, then you're talking about a localized portion of the ocean, not the ocean as a whole. I've dove on quite a few reefs where the crest was 10s of meters away from a sand bed. Heck, I dove several walls in Dominica where the sand bed was approximately 3,000 feet below (although I suppose you could argue that the sand above is closer). How about we say 10 meters...Heck, lets say 2 meters. This is a typical scenario for many reefs in the keys. On those reefs the current across the crest is fairly strong. Any nutrients that are "created" on the reef are rapidly removed by the flow of water. The sand bed that is 2 meters away/below is not going to process those nutrients. Which gets me back to the arguement that because our tanks are closed systems and do not have the complete zonation of the ocean, the use of sand in an aquarium on the basis that it exists in the wild is flawed.

Here's another good example of a reef in the wild. Many oil rigs eventually develop full blown reefs on their structure. Given that these platforms are typically anywhere from 300 feet to a mile off of the ocean floor, there's a reef in the wild with no sand.

How about reefs that grow on wrecks? The Spiegel Grove is quickly forming into a full fledged reef. The upper point of the wreck is in 60-65 feet of water. The sand is at 134, 70 feet away. There's another reef with no sand "near". The Duane is similiar although it's not as far to the sand (I think the top of the wheel house is about 40-50 feet from the sand).

In all of those examples, the nutrient export is accomplished by rapid flow pulling it away from the reef to be processed elsewhere, which is what properly setup bare bottom aquariums do.

And to make sure we're on the same page. If you want to consider a rock bottom as substrate, then there is no such thing as a bare bottom tank. Saying that rock is substrate is essentially the same as saying that starboard or bare glass is substrate.

We're talking about sand here as a rubble bottom is not used in a DSB. A rubble bottom provides no additional benefit beyond the normal functions of live rock, which is found in bare bottom tanks.

 

[DaddyJax]

And to use some experience with rubble bottoms is that they are end up like many crushed coral substrates. They end up trapping detritus and breeding nitrates and Po4.

There are a lot of arguments, and very valid ones, for bor both. I agree with Luminary on the natural reefs but I also have seen coral farms setup their propagation on racks on the sand near the natural reef.