Natural enemy to those liitle worms in the sand bed that have those nasty tentacles!

[Amphiprionocellaris]

You have given no support for your claims. You ignore the truth when it does not fit in with the claims you're making. Your DSB, crawling with worms, is constantly releasing phosphate and nitrate into the water. You know this to be true but refuse to admit it. You won't come right out and deny it either. You simply dance around the subject by stating that phosphate can be removed by other means, and that a fraction of the nitrate can be converted into N2. Why can't you just openly admit the truth? Sand beds collect rotting organic matter. Rotting organic matter releases phosphate and nitrate into the environment. This is the truth, and you know it to be true.

See my previous post for support of my claims...I can continue to add more research until we've reached a point where you're satisfied. You continue to claim that my sandbed is releasing nutrients, but this is patently false. If that were true, I would have detectable levels of said nutrients and/or algae growth, neither of which I have. So I "refuse to admit" that it's emitting nitrates/phosphates because that simply isn't fact. In fact, much more than a mere "fraction" of nitrate goes through denitrification, which is why marine environments are nitrate-limited. Indeed, coral reefs are sites of nitrogen fixation, wherein microbes convert nitrogen gas into nitrate for use in the food web. As far as your claim that "rotting organic matter releases N/P," this is true only so far as rotting consists of aerobic degradation. However, denitrifcation is the second-most important form of decay, and obviously removes rather than releases nitrates.

No you can't. I can make all kinds of wild claims as the the magical powers of rubber duckies to "filter" my water. Then take pic's of my tank with a rubber ducky floating in it. If all the animals aren't visibly in the process of dieing, does it prove that rubber duckies have great magical filtering capabilities? Of course not. Taking pic's that don't show animals in the obvious state of dieing, does not show that any particular aspect of the system works as claimed. Science will tell us how the systems work. Science tells us that the system you speak of is a fertilizer factory.

Actually, yes I can, because I'm not talking about presenting the picture of a tank, I'm talking about the existence of long-running systems that not only have no detectable nutrients or algae growth, but also present very high levels of coral growth and a number of captive spawning events. Moreover, I have a mechanistic explanation for why that's the case involving the increase in nutrient flow, as well as scientific evidence for the occurence of this mechanism in nature. You predict that my systems should be fertilizer factories, but you have offered no evidence for why this is the case. I would like to see clear documentation of your claim that worms in sand beds increase the rate of nitrate and phosphate release, with subsequent increases in algae growth. This might be hard considering there are studies showing exactly the opposite (that worms restore algae-infested systems).

From your link. "The increase of denitrification, occurring at different depths in the sediment with respect to time, was
directly dependent on the macrofaunal activity."

This is exactly my point: macrofaunal activity directly increases rates of denitrification. That's why I claim they're a vital part of a successful sand bed system. Simple.

When the rate of decomposition increases, due to the presence of worms, the rate of everything associated with that decomposition also goes up. The rate at which phosphate is released into the environment goes up, the rate at which nitrate is released into the environment goes up, and yes........ the rate of denitrification goes up. That does not mean that all the nitrate released by decomposition, with the aid of worms, gets converted into N2.

The problem is, that isn't true, and is the danger of using "decomposition" as a lump term. It is more than possible to increase e.g. rates of denitrificaiton without increasing rates of aerobic decomposition, which would result in a net removal of nitrate (as DNF would remove the nitrate produced in aerobic degradation...coupled nitrification/denitrification). In most natural cases, nitrate either falls or stays static (at 0) when looking at an established benthic community. Your claim that all rates go up in the presence of bioturbation is unsupported, and your insinuation that an increase in all these rates is bad is misleading. An increase in both nitrate production and consumption will still give the same effect (sum zero nitrates, as in my tank), but with faster turnover time.

Here's another quote that you seem to be ignoring from your link.
"Results from these studies have
provided evidence for the quantitative role of bioturbation
in various processes, e.g. enhanced nitrate supply"

I'm not ignoring it, but it's been taken out of context here. The "availability" of which the authors spoke was availability for microbial processes within the sandbed (e.g. denitrificaiton or DNRA), not benthic flux. This is due to two phenomena: 1) bioturbation leads to redox oscillations where a part of the sediment while cycle through odic and anoxic conditions; this leads to an increase in oxidation of ammonia, followed by subsequent reduction of nitrate (so that the end result is a net export of nitrogen) and 2) The higher availability of oxygen at depth promotes faster nitrification from ammonia, thus again increasing the availability of nitrate for DNF. That's what the authors meant and what most studies focus on as the main ecosystem control.

I would strongly suggest doing some google scholar searches on marine benthic ecology, specifically the microbial food web that was discovered about 20 years ago. There is a lot of stuff on the bulk ecosystem effects of bioturbation, and I know for sure there are at least two papers documenting the role bioturbation plays in system recovery in polluted areas. There is ample support for the benefits of bioturbation in sediments, and I think many journals like Marine Ecology Progress Series (MEPS) and Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE) are trying to go all-free for article access. TREE especially is good about having concise articles, and I know they regularly cover bioturbation.

 

[elegance coral]

Your have relied on the simple premise that a given flake of wasted food can be mechanicaly filtered instead of eaten and processed by a worm. Your premise relies on 100% efficient mechanical filtration of wastes, and as such, does not hold up within the context of the systems we are discussing. Nobody is going to argue that worms would be needed if you had a system setup that removed the waste in another fashion.

We do have a system to remove the waste in another fashion. I posted a link to it earlier in this thread. We also have filter socks and skimmers that help control solid particles.

Most of us change water by syphoning it out of the tank with a hose. It doesn't take much effort to slap an inexpensive gravel vac on the end of the hose, and move it through the sand as we do this. This removes huge quantities of organic matter. Organic matter that would otherwise rot and degrade our water quality. Worms or no worms.

It's not realistic to assume that we're going to remove 100% of the detritus from a healthy reef tank. It's not realistic to think that we're going to remove all the dirt from a car either, but we wash them anyway. I don't know anyone that jacks up their car and scrubs the undercarriage. There will always be nooks and crannies, in our systems, we can't get to, to remove detritus. That shouldn't stop us from removing the vast majority that we can get to. When we remove detritus we remove 100% of the nitrate and phosphate it contains. Our sand stays clean and white, like the beaches near coral reefs. The sand no longer pumps out large quantities of phosphate that inhibits the growth of our corals and coraline algae, or fuels problem algae growth. Our dependence on GAC to clarify our water is reduced because we don't have huge quantities of rot discoloring our water. Our dependence on phosphate removing media is reduced. The number and amount of water changes needed to keep nutrients at acceptable levels is reduced. Our systems remain healthier, longer, once the majority of the rot and decay has been removed. Reef keeping becomes much easier, less expensive, and our animals flourish.

 

[elegance coral]

Okay, okay, okay...... Hopefully, this will be my last post in this thread.

This is real simple. Nature depends on the nutrients that are released from decomposition. If nutrients like nitrate and phosphate somehow magically disappear after entering a sand bed, life on this planet would not exist. Plants would die, herbivores would die, carnivorous would die, and life as we know it would be over. This is fact and it doesn't matter how people want to spin it. Thankfully, these nutrients do not magically disappear in sand beds. The solid particles of organic matter that end up in sand beds, rot. It doesn't matter how many different species of critters take part in the decomposition of that organic matter. All they do is speed up the time it takes to turn a solid particle into liquid fertilizer. If you have a compost pile in your yard, adding a bunch of worms will simply speed up the time it takes to turn those lawn clippings into fertilizer. The same exact thing happens in the pile of rot and decay some people have on the bottom of their tank. People can spin it how ever they like, but they can't get beyond this fact. To ignore this is to simply ignore the truth. We can spend massive amounts of money, time, and effort on things like GAC, GFO, huge skimmers, and massive water changes in an attempt to combat the nutrients that are being released from this pile of rot and decay, or we can simply remove the pile of rot and decay. It's up to the individule.

Peace
EC

 

[Opcn]

We do have a system to remove the waste in another fashion. I posted a link to it earlier in this thread. We also have filter socks and skimmers that help control solid particles.

Most of us change water by syphoning it out of the tank with a hose. It doesn't take much effort to slap an inexpensive gravel vac on the end of the hose, and move it through the sand as we do this. This removes huge quantities of organic matter. Organic matter that would otherwise rot and degrade our water quality. Worms or no worms.

It's not realistic to assume that we're going to remove 100% of the detritus from a healthy reef tank. It's not realistic to think that we're going to remove all the dirt from a car either, but we wash them anyway. I don't know anyone that jacks up their car and scrubs the undercarriage. There will always be nooks and crannies, in our systems, we can't get to, to remove detritus. That shouldn't stop us from removing the vast majority that we can get to. When we remove detritus we remove 100% of the nitrate and phosphate it contains. Our sand stays clean and white, like the beaches near coral reefs. The sand no longer pumps out large quantities of phosphate that inhibits the growth of our corals and coraline algae, or fuels problem algae growth. Our dependence on GAC to clarify our water is reduced because we don't have huge quantities of rot discoloring our water. Our dependence on phosphate removing media is reduced. The number and amount of water changes needed to keep nutrients at acceptable levels is reduced. Our systems remain healthier, longer, once the majority of the rot and decay has been removed. Reef keeping becomes much easier, less expensive, and our animals flourish.

You say all of this as if ANY one at ANY point in this thread said ANY thing that would disagree with it. No one has denied any means of nutrient removal, yet you keep pulling it out and then calling us dumb in essence for disagreeing with it. Inventing from whole cloth reasons to be insulting is not a very polite way to conduct yourself.

Okay, okay, okay...... Hopefully, this will be my last post in this thread.

This is real simple. Nature depends on the nutrients that are released from decomposition. If nutrients like nitrate and phosphate somehow magically disappear after entering a sand bed, life on this planet would not exist. Plants would die, herbivores would die, carnivorous would die, and life as we know it would be over. This is fact and it doesn't matter how people want to spin it. Thankfully, these nutrients do not magically disappear in sand beds. The solid particles of organic matter that end up in sand beds, rot. It doesn't matter how many different species of critters take part in the decomposition of that organic matter. All they do is speed up the time it takes to turn a solid particle into liquid fertilizer. If you have a compost pile in your yard, adding a bunch of worms will simply speed up the time it takes to turn those lawn clippings into fertilizer. The same exact thing happens in the pile of rot and decay some people have on the bottom of their tank. People can spin it how ever they like, but they can't get beyond this fact. To ignore this is to simply ignore the truth. We can spend massive amounts of money, time, and effort on things like GAC, GFO, huge skimmers, and massive water changes in an attempt to combat the nutrients that are being released from this pile of rot and decay, or we can simply remove the pile of rot and decay. It's up to the individule.

Peace
EC

Another post entirely on the subject of how much you hate sand beds with anlmost nothing to do with the subject of the thread.

You've violated the first rule of having an intelligent discussion, which is to know the subject of the discussion.

Worms and other infauna do not magically make nutrients disappear, some of them enter the watercolumn as inorganic salts (and a little in bacterioplankton) and others enter the watercolumn as eggs and larvae (which get a second round as fish and coral food), rather than all of it sitting around to enter the water column as inorganic salts (and a little bacterioplankton) and a bit of it ends up back as detritus. The point being that infauna keep it mobile so it gets dealt with in a number of ways rather than leaving it all to rot in the sandbed. The sandbed becomes a place that nutrients move through when there are organisms living in it rather than a place that nutrient build up in.

 

[thebanker]

I don't think anyone could argue against nutrient export being the best way to deal with waste in the aquarium.

That said, I don't think that worms in your sandbed will make anything worse.

 

[BeanAnimal]

We do have a system to remove the waste in another fashion. I posted a link to it earlier in this thread. We also have filter socks and skimmers that help control solid particles.

Nobody said there were not various methods of waste removal. You continue to make statements that hope to give the impression we are all confused about basic facts, that act is intellectually dishonest. At its core this portion of your argument hinges on the fact that 100% of the waste must be removed so that the worms can't get it (or don't need to get it). In the systems in question, that is simply not a reasonable assumption or goal. In our systems the worms play an important and beneficial role, as outlined numerous times in this thread. I think the least complicated illustration of that fact was posted by OCPN just a few paragraphs back:

Opcn:
Worms and other infauna do not magically make nutrients disappear, some of them enter the watercolumn as inorganic salts (and a little in bacterioplankton) and others enter the watercolumn as eggs and larvae (which get a second round as fish and coral food), rather than all of it sitting around to enter the water column as inorganic salts (and a little bacterioplankton) and a bit of it ends up back as detritus. The point being that infauna keep it mobile so it gets dealt with in a number of ways rather than leaving it all to rot in the sandbed. The sandbed becomes a place that nutrients move through when there are organisms living in it rather than a place that nutrient build up in.


Respectfully, with each passing post your position and supporting arguments and counter responses become (in my opinion) increasingly less coherant with regard to substantiating your initial points. You have ventured into debating different methods of husbandry and your opinion on what is effective, convenient, etc. None of this proves that worms are bad. Again (as Agu pointed out) it would appear that your actaul core argument is that DSBs are not a viable mechanism.

 

[thebanker]

"With a deep enough DSB, and a bunch of worms, I could remove the nutrients of the world."

- Archimedes

 

[elegance coral]

I don't think anyone could argue against nutrient export being the best way to deal with waste in the aquarium.

That said, I don't think that worms in your sandbed will make anything worse.

In most cases, I agree with you. We all have worms. They eek out an existence on what ever scraps they can find. We rarely see them, and their numbers stay relatively low, so they're not that big a deal. At least that's the way it is in a clean tank. When you run into problems like the OP has, with an over abundance of worms, it's a sign that there is an excessive amount of rot and decay in the system feeding them. Basically, the tank just needs a good spring cleaning. Remove most of the rot and filth, and the bulk of the worms go away. Problem solved. A few worms here and there are no big deal.

 

[elegance coral]

"With a deep enough DSB, and a bunch of worms, I could remove the nutrients of the world."

- Archimedes

LOL With the great abyssal plain covering more than half the earths surface, I wonder why we haven't run out of nutrients yet?????? :wildone:

 

[thebanker]

I wonder if the OP really has a problem? One hobbyist's opinion of "too many worms" could be different from another's.

I only say this because I see plenty of posts in NTTH, Reef Discussion that say "my tank has a problem! It's infested with ______" and the ______ is a moderate amount of some fairly innocuous creature, like pineapple sponges or stomatella snails.

Just 9 months ago, my tank was INFESTED with tiny white snails. They're gone now, I don't think I could even find one. Same with "whip hydroids" and several other instances of microfauna blooming - temporarily - in my closed system.