New Nitrate theory

[tmz]

Re: am i reading this right

Re: am i reading this right

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14967053#post14967053 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by papajojo
short term deep sand beds will act as sponges. Eventually because of one thing or another or lack there of they will reach their max. Then slowly but surely they will leach. left undisturbed lots of nasties get worse and worse till they reach catastrophic levels. so long term: 2-4 inch with varying sized media would facilitate transfer. should shallow sand beds be left undisturbed or should they be stirred or vaccumed often?

In my opiion, there is no reason to beleive sand beds will leach anything or reach a so called max. They provide surface area for bacteria primarily.They're not absorbtive except perhaps for some precipitants. They do require some stirring and/or vacuuming from time to time.

 

[Aquarist007]

Re: Re: am i reading this right

Re: Re: am i reading this right

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14968270#post14968270 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tmz
In my opiion, there is no reason to beleive sand beds will leach anything or reach a so called max. They provide surface area for bacteria primarily.They're not absorbtive except perhaps for some precipitants. They do require some stirring and/or vacuuming from time to time.

I agree with you Tom--if you follow the reverse food chain in the sand bed. Carbon based materials and others are consumed at each level and excreted along with co2. The creature lower in the food chain and sand bed consumes the excrement and repeats the process. At each point the original mass has decreased. Leaving the final mass for the anerobic area in the anoxic area of the sand bed. If you agree with this model (Shimek's) then if you take care of the upper layer of the sand bed and the creatures in it then you are not going to get the build up or leaching of materials to lower leve--back to the orginal post on this great thread---IMO this is major reason why deep sand beds fail---when the reefer does not actively take care of the health of that very important first layer in the substrate.

 

[Paul B]

They do require some stirring and/or vacuuming from time to time.

I agree with Tom, these things do require some maintenance just like everything else in life.

Hey Capn, it was a very productive day, I went to Brooklyn to do a job, it is 20 miles and took me exactly 2 hours to get there and 25 minutes to park.
I made $120.00 in 2 hours and got a ticket on my way home which coincidentially cost $120.00.
I just love NY :lol:

 

[Aquarist007]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14969463#post14969463 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Paul B
I agree with Tom, these things do require some maintenance just like everything else in life.

Hey Capn, it was a very productive day, I went to Brooklyn to do a job, it is 20 miles and took me exactly 2 hours to get there and 25 minutes to park.
I made $120.00 in 2 hours and got a ticket on my way home which coincidentially cost $120.00.
I just love NY :lol:

"green acres is the place to be" "manning a shrimp boat is the life for me--ocean speading out so far a wide skip Manhatten just give that the deep blue sea"

lyrics by eddie arnold gump:lol: :mixed: :eek2:

BTW why are you agreeing with Tom--I am the one that said it after staying up all night do extensive reserach just so I could stay in the same thread with you guys
boy its never good enough is it:lol: :rollface: :lol:

 

[Agu]

I'm a little late to this thread but I've read the whole thing.

Comments early on in this thread ...... not picking on you Paul, it was brought up several times.

I never believed the concept that "critters" in a DSB burrow under the sand to let in water to be treated. All "critters" need oxygen to live and none of them are going to burrow into a bed with no oxygen, it just aint going to happen.

I have a ten gallon with no mechanical filtration whatsoever and for the first five years it had a DSB. The only nuisance algae I had was a little on the glass, and most of it was coralline algae. I attributed it to my great skills but the truth is that I had a couple of Capitellid Worms cleaning my DSB.

Further Reading

 

[Aquarist007]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14970519#post14970519 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Agu
I'm a little late to this thread but I've read the whole thing.

Comments early on in this thread ...... not picking on you Paul, it was brought up several times.



I have a ten gallon with no mechanical filtration whatsoever and for the first five years it had a DSB. The only nuisance algae I had was a little on the glass, and most of it was coralline algae. I attributed it to my great skills but the truth is that I had a couple of Capitellid Worms cleaning my DSB.

Further Reading

good readings --thanks Agu
So are you a believer of Shimek's work and the importance of the role of micro organisms in each level of the substrate?

 

[Agu]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14970806#post14970806 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by capn_hylinur
good readings --thanks Agu
So are you a believer of Shimek's work and the importance of the role of micro organisms in each level of the substrate?

NO, ......the powerhead kept pushing substrate to the back of the tank and I just kept adding heavier substrate until it stayed in place. By the time it settled in there was a DSB in the tank.

And I don't know where the worms came from either .......... but I do believe they are a factor in the ease of maintenance of that tank. They clean/stir the sandbed for me.

 

[Paul B]

Capn, Tom seems like a nice guy so I figured I would agree with him.



Quote
"I attributed it to my great skills but the truth is that I had a couple of Capitellid Worms cleaning my DSB."

AGU, I also attribute it to your great skills.
So Capn, if you want to keep your DSB running for at least 5 years you may need to add Capitellid worms.


Or of course let AGU take care of yopur tank

not picking on you Paul, it was brought up several times.

Oh go ahead and pick on me, I don't mind, my wife does it all the time

 

[Aquarist007]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14971363#post14971363 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Paul B
Capn, Tom seems like a nice guy so I figured I would agree with him.



Quote
"I attributed it to my great skills but the truth is that I had a couple of Capitellid Worms cleaning my DSB."

AGU, I also attribute it to your great skills.
So Capn, if you want to keep your DSB running for at least 5 years you may need to add Capitellid worms.


Or of course let AGU take care of yopur tank

Oh go ahead and pick on me, I don't mind, my wife does it all the time

I just posted on a thread with a gentleman named Bill. He has been in salt water for 37 years---wow that is getting close to you--there are actually two of you---you both got together you might be a match for the water keeper.

I'll stick with the bristle worms thanks---I think I saw pictures along time of go of one of those worms being caught--it was 5 feet long streched out.:eek2:

Agu--how deep a sand bed did you have to support them. If I had one of them in my tank the substrate would be heaving like phosphane in a reactor:lol:

 

[Agu]

At the time the DSB was 3" in front and 4" in back. But realize this is only a 10 gallon tank and it supported two worms that were close to mature size.

 

[DennisRB]

This is an interesting discussion. I was thinking about sand beds in a bucket and I wondered if a deep bucket full of sand would not be very efficient use of the available volume. I wondered if it would be more efficient to fill the bucket with a multiple layers of sand separated by plenum like areas which differed from a normal plenum in that you would encourage flow though them. So instead of having 20" of sand you could have 4 layers of 4" thick sand separated by 1" plenums with flow.

Since only the first few inches are supposedly doing all the denitrification you could increase the productivity of the bucket by many times with this method. I wondered how deep each layer would have to be which is why I was going to use 4", but going by this it may only need to be 1". So with multiple 1" layers you could increase the surface area by over 10 times in a 20" deep bucket.

I here people using the term UDSB, for upside down sand bed. What is this all about? My multiple layer sand bed bucket idea will use upside down and right way up sand beds to reduce the amount of plenums needed by putting a UDSB under a normal sandbed, separated by a sheet of plastic. I will draw a pic later.

 

[Aquarist007]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14972540#post14972540 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by DennisRB
This is an interesting discussion. I was thinking about sand beds in a bucket and I wondered if a deep bucket full of sand would not be very efficient use of the available volume. I wondered if it would be more efficient to fill the bucket with a multiple layers of sand separated by plenum like areas which differed from a normal plenum in that you would encourage flow though them. So instead of having 20" of sand you could have 4 layers of 4" thick sand separated by 1" plenums with flow.

Since only the first few inches are supposedly doing all the denitrification you could increase the productivity of the bucket by many times with this method. I wondered how deep each layer would have to be which is why I was going to use 4", but going by this it may only need to be 1". So with multiple 1" layers you could increase the surface area by over 10 times in a 20" deep bucket.

here is an excellent thread on a deep sand bed in a bucket:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=595109&highlight=calfo+sand+bed+bucket

I here people using the term UDSB, for upside down sand bed. What is this all about? My multiple layer sand bed bucket idea will use upside down and right way up sand beds to reduce the amount of plenums needed by putting a UDSB under a normal sandbed, separated by a sheet of plastic. I will draw a pic later.

 

[tmz]

Thanks Paul,

I'll take it as high praise from a fellow Long Islander if you count Queens.

BTW while I did the college thing , I worked too and then volunteered for the military. Chose not to do OCS but enlisted for Military Intelligence, got out after 3 years as a buck sergeant but after basic training it was most mostly civilian clothes. The Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 got me sent to Berlin when there was still a wall instead of South East Asia . I didn't complain. Out of the army and it was work, kids, two jobs back to school for a masters on the Gi bill and on and on. Never had the time or funds for reefing until I retired 7 years ago but I'll catch up with you.

I like Buffalo now but do miss the fishing on Long Island.

 

[tmz]

Nice photos of those worms Agu. Thanks.

Dennis RB.

Some folks like the deep bucket sand bed. I think it is a flawed design.While I think denitrification can happen in deep anoxic substrate areas ,the heterotrophic bacteria there need organic carbon to thrive.,;not just water and nitrate. The deep bucket design relies on fast water movement of preferably prefiltered water moving quickly across the relatively surface area of the bucket. I don't think much carbon will get down into the depths unless perhaps if you are dosing something like ethanol and then in a bed with no channeling from live organisms you might get a hydrogen sulfide problem. I think deep sand beds are fine nitrifiers and denitrifiers if they are kept alive and maintained. They also make great habitat for much benthic fauna and are needed by certain fish and other critters you may choose to keep. I do not think deep sterile beds do very much.

 

[DennisRB]

As far as I know, people just fill the bucket up with sand. The end result is a large volume of sand and not so much surface area. According to this thread the surface area is more important, hence my idea of multiple layers of thinner sand.

 

[tmz]

Yes but you need to insure you have anoxic areas even if they are relatively shallow and a means for organic carbon to reach them as well as nitrate. Considerations about flow, media size , and the amount of DOM in the water sourced to the bucket. Good luck with the project . Let us know how it works out.

 

[DennisRB]

According to this thread 1" is all that is needed for anoxic zones. But my origianl plans were for 4" layers. I don't think carbon is a worry. I am a fan of sugar dosing anyhow.

I don't see people recommending light, living creatures and detritus build up in a coil denitrator for it to work. Coil denitrators etc work fine without carbon dosing so why would that be any different to a clean sand bed?

Going by what is being claimed in this thread, this would make a remote bucket sand bed 5 times as effective as there is now 5 times more surface area, but the layers are still deep enough for denitrification.

 

[wayne in norway]

Cap'n - I am in a different time zone, and much has happened in this thread. My summary would be that Ron is dead wrong, and the reality is the reverse of his position. Read this reference, or at least the abstract to get the gist of it....
http://www.aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_50/issue_3/0779.pdf
and then plough thro' the guys homesite
http://ocean.fsu.edu/faculty/huettel/Huettel_page/index_Huettel080920.html for lots of other useful things to think about.
I was initially intrigued by the ability of advection on a sand bed to work in neutral density acrylic flakes 2 centimetres plus in only a few hours using a water velocity of 10cms a second - easily attained dsb in a bucket? it's the water velovity over my sand bed in my sump.

Dennis - I tihnk sand bed depth is very important , as much as surface area. If we take a sand bed, and put no water flow over it the only things moving oxygen, nitrate, whatever in and out are diffusion (very weak) and possibly living things. Thus you will go from a zone of high oxygen saturation to one of low (or no) oxygen saturation very quickly. If we then plumb in water flow, we introduce advective flow, and lots of it thro' the sand bed. Now it will take us far longer to get from the highly oxygenated surface layer to a lower oxygen zone, and again a lot more depth to go from low to no oxygen. The surface area is the same, but the volume of the top two layers ( high oxygen and lowered oxygen) is greatly increased. Nitrate reduction to nitrate takes place (I believe) in the low oxygen zone, not the entirely anoxic, so maximising this volume is, for us, good.
The 1 inch depth to anoxia is entirely dependant on a combination of grain size and water flow above i.m.o. Increases in both increase the depth. What dies that tell us about mud and 'rooted' algae?

Finally I have never thought of my dsb as either a black hole or finite. Didn't Charles Delbeek monitor some nutrient levels in a dsb or plenum thro' time and find seasonal variation. Either way, it wasn't as a one way street.

 

[Paul B]

Tom thats great, I am also from Queens and was a Buck Sgt.
I knew there was a reason I liked you.

 

[DennisRB]

Wayne, you would obviously want slow flow through the chambers.