New Nitrate theory
- Thread starter Paul B
- Start date
jesterns2
Member
You say that ina manner that leads me to believe that you may want a particular nitrate level? I thought especially when you go Reef that you don`t want Nitrates? I`m sure once I get a better skimmer next week and get the sump i`m gonna be makin that I should be able to get rid of those nitrates hopefully
It's more that your sig says "just started" that warrants the comment. If your tank is fairly young, it's not a great idea to go chasing numbers. It takes some time for things to settle in on there own, and if you start changing things before the tank has had a chance, it will take a very long time to start working correctly.
vermonter310
New member
Sounds to me like that might be the trick. Getting the depth, grain size and flow to work together to create low oxygen zone while avoiding creating the no Oxygen zones in the deeper sections. or at least creating more of an hypoxic zone and less of a anoxic zone.
While a 3 inch sandbed with a certian size grain may not allow the anoxic zone to develop in a system with good flow, in a system with less flow, it may. Same would apply to grain size and depth, hence the balancing act .
if the same system had larger grain size, even more flow and less depth(or a combination of the three) it most likely wouldn't create the anoxic zone but may not create enough of the hypoxic zone to reduce the nitrates or Ammo created by the bioload of the system. this would explain why some systems seem to work with both approaches..
Of course, I didn't stay at a holiday inn last night so I may be way off base.
I disagree that "no" creature will burrow into hydrogen sulfide. I will guarantee there is a creature that will burrow and thrive in that....finding it will be a different story. There is something for everything when it comes to the ocean, the thing we're trying to replicate.
MileHighFish
New member
Well true there are animals/life/organism's that sit at the mouths of thermal vents deep in the ocean, but I dont think they apply here 
MileHighFish
New member
Its not, but its not sugar sand either its more like coral rubble.
Paul B
Premium Member
I think the ocean has a UG filter, we just haven't seen the uplift tubes yet 
I do a lot of collecting where I lift big flat rocks to get crabs, worms, pods etc. About half the rocks are stuck firm to the mud where no air enters. These have nothing byt hydrogen sulfide under them and nothing else but stink. There is no animals what so ever. Not even a worm. Just of course bacteria. And if you leave that rock up side down, those bacteria die shortly and the rock eventually becomes live rock as I have a bunch of them in my tank. Any animal that you find living in Hydrogen sulfide will have a hard time living in an oxygen envirnment.
I do a lot of collecting where I lift big flat rocks to get crabs, worms, pods etc. About half the rocks are stuck firm to the mud where no air enters. These have nothing byt hydrogen sulfide under them and nothing else but stink. There is no animals what so ever. Not even a worm. Just of course bacteria. And if you leave that rock up side down, those bacteria die shortly and the rock eventually becomes live rock as I have a bunch of them in my tank. Any animal that you find living in Hydrogen sulfide will have a hard time living in an oxygen envirnment.
TulsaReefer
New member
I had a sand bed in a tank for right at 10 years before I finally tore it down last fall to upgrade to a larger tank. Though I'm not sure it qualified as a "DSB" since it seems to be a rather broad term. It contained anywhere from 1" to 3" (maybe almost 4" in some areas) of sugar fine oolitic sand. When I tore the tank down the sand had no areas of hydrogen sulfide as it's quite easy to detect when digging sand out of the bottom of a tank. I found burrowing worms down to the lowest level actually burrowing right at the bottom glass and sand interface in even the deepest areas.
If your trying to use this article as a treatise on why sand beds are bad, then your only really proving that sand beds that are too deep, i.e. improperly created and maintained sand beds are bad. So what's the news there, almost anything improperly done in this hobby can be a problem. I'm not sure how many people went out and tried to build sand beds that contained a large portions of anoxic areas that this article is focused on. We already knew that Nitrate reduction was done in hypoxic zones, not anoxic and that there was always a danger of H2S formation in anoxic areas with organic matter present. With this knowledge I wouldn't throw out the idea of using a sand bed, I'd try to work around that to minimize those risks. If my sand bed is too shallow it may not reduce Nitrate, but then it's also not harming anything either, and Nitrate reduction isn't the only reason to have sand in my view. So I tend to error on the shallow side, and use additional measure to help in Nitrate control (good skimming, water changes, growing nitrate consumers such as algaes, etc.).
I find the additional diversity I get with a sand bed worthwhile, as well as I enjoy the look of it as well. My new tank has again anywhere from maybe 1 1/2" to 3 1/2 inches of sugar fine oolite , much of it harvested from the old tank. I have a huge population of burrowing pods (they look like tiny mantis shrimp, but never get bigger than about 1/4 inch) that burrow all over the sand, and where the burrows show along the edges of the glass, they burrow down at least an inch or two, showing that there must be decent oxygen levels there, or as you had said they wouldn't go there. And if I scoop up a cup of sand and look through it, I have a great population of worms and other tiny creatures that inhabit the sand. My Mandarin spends a good part of the day hunting in the sand bed, picking small creature out, and it's quite large and healthy. I think that diversity is good, and without the sand a huge part of that would be gone.
ctenophors rule
New member
so, if the life rock is bad when it is large because it does not have enough oxygen, could it be possible that;
making live rock, and placing clumps of salt in the middle, that will be washed out later could prevent all of this by allowing more aireated water flow?
making live rock hollowish, so their are only ever 3-4 inches of live rock, before water is flowing thour the other side?
thanks, interested in knowing
making live rock, and placing clumps of salt in the middle, that will be washed out later could prevent all of this by allowing more aireated water flow?
making live rock hollowish, so their are only ever 3-4 inches of live rock, before water is flowing thour the other side?
thanks, interested in knowing
TulsaReefer
New member
You really have to qualify that type of statement, as it depends on location. The ocean is a large place, and every reef is a little different. I've seen reefs with mainly rubble zones (typically higher energy reefs), and some less energetic (usually on the back sides of barrier reef, and more lagoon type) have very fine silty sand. So it's a bit difficult to argue that "reef" do or don't have any particular botton structure.
In the USVI I watched armies of parrot fish "make sand" in what seemed to be good quantity as they chewed off bits of the reef and excreted it back out as fine sand (I don't think they can pass rubble
, or at least it would be a bit of a strain).ctenophors rule
New member
the way i see it is that most of the ocean has incredibly small particled sand, and this is primarily located in the depper more oxygen deprived parts of the ocean, but their are other forces at work. depper where this bacteria should be more common, their may be a heterotrophic archeabacteria that eats them, and controls their population, or their may be a bacteria deeper in the sand that absorbs every thing the bad bacteria made,
their are bacteria in 50 feet deep sugar grain sand, their is bacteria fozen in the poles that still survives. their is bacteria everywhere in short.
their are millions, if not billions of different species of bacteriums that we may never find, recently a study was done in a lake and 100+ new species were found in single sample.
we just need to know m,ore about the ecology of this bacteria, and its natural wild husbandry.
their are bacteria in 50 feet deep sugar grain sand, their is bacteria fozen in the poles that still survives. their is bacteria everywhere in short.
their are millions, if not billions of different species of bacteriums that we may never find, recently a study was done in a lake and 100+ new species were found in single sample.
we just need to know m,ore about the ecology of this bacteria, and its natural wild husbandry.
superedge88
New member
I can't help but chuckle, are we really trying to equate our aquariums to the ocean? Trying to dissect what kind of sandbeds are in the ocean as if that is what we should mimmic because then our aquariums would "work" right. The ocean has millions of other factors (the largest one being dillution of most of the things we are trying to avoid like nitrate) and to back that up the ocean has some of the most thriving examples of photosynthetic organisms in the world to act as a back up for consuming nitrate/phosphate etc. So to start a conversation about "the ocean isn't bare bottom so our tanks shouldn't be" or "I use coral rubble because that is what the ocean has" from the standpoint of water quality, it is pretty pointless.
Aquarist007
New member
I understand that there are three types of bacteria in the nitrogen cycle. and I understand that anoxic bacteria are key to reducing nitrates to nitrogen gas--completing the cycle.
I further understand that the anoxic bacteria thrive in areas of very low oxygen.
What I don't understand then is why a deep sand bed is NOT suitable for maintaining them as is the deep core of live rock.
I further understand that the anoxic bacteria thrive in areas of very low oxygen.
What I don't understand then is why a deep sand bed is NOT suitable for maintaining them as is the deep core of live rock.
Personally... i think the article was good because it pointed out a mechanism for direct atmospheric nitrogen fixation by a bacterial community.
The ability to directly fix atmospheric nitrogen isn't well understood. If it was, farmers wouldn't need to spend millions on fertilizers each year.
I liked that the article mentioned that ammonium was more readily usable then nitrate (ammonium was energetically favorable to nitrate, meaning it's more easily used then nitrate.). That means that ammonium doesn't necessarily go through the entire nitrogen cycle. It skips directly to the convertion back into atmospheric nitrogen. It does however mean that it blocks the uptake of existing nitrates.
The article does hint at why some deep sand beds may become nitrate producers over time though.
If you look, you'll note that the article says that most denitrifiying bacteria are primary consumers of mono and Di-saccrides.
Mono and Di-saccrides are things like Glucose and ethanol.
I believe that the reason why Deep Sandbeds stop denitrifying over time is because the denitrifying bacteria that live in the sandbed deplete these particular nutrients. That's why if you leave a Remote Deep Sandbed to stagnate, it can eventually be hooked backup and consumes nitrates again. The die off of the aerobic organism in the top layer of the sandbed replenishes the Dissolved Organic Carbon.
This also largely accounts for why carbon dosing works.
The ability to directly fix atmospheric nitrogen isn't well understood. If it was, farmers wouldn't need to spend millions on fertilizers each year.
I liked that the article mentioned that ammonium was more readily usable then nitrate (ammonium was energetically favorable to nitrate, meaning it's more easily used then nitrate.). That means that ammonium doesn't necessarily go through the entire nitrogen cycle. It skips directly to the convertion back into atmospheric nitrogen. It does however mean that it blocks the uptake of existing nitrates.
The article does hint at why some deep sand beds may become nitrate producers over time though.
If you look, you'll note that the article says that most denitrifiying bacteria are primary consumers of mono and Di-saccrides.
Mono and Di-saccrides are things like Glucose and ethanol.
I believe that the reason why Deep Sandbeds stop denitrifying over time is because the denitrifying bacteria that live in the sandbed deplete these particular nutrients. That's why if you leave a Remote Deep Sandbed to stagnate, it can eventually be hooked backup and consumes nitrates again. The die off of the aerobic organism in the top layer of the sandbed replenishes the Dissolved Organic Carbon.
This also largely accounts for why carbon dosing works.
Similar threads
