refugium setup

Dave VG

Dave VG

New member
Getting ready. Have tank 20 long, overflows, ording glass baffles and pump. yahooo!! A lot of work before it gets hooked up tho. I will be getting rid of my crushed coral sand bed and putting in sand only. I'm converting this from a FOWLR by the way. This will problly take a day at least. Should i paint the back or use colored backing? I will be able to do this during the conversion. Wished i did before i set it up the first time. I would like to hear how deep your sand beds are. How deep is to deep?

Dave
 
I always use the colored backgrounds because I hate painting and I never have the patience to wait for it to dry. As for the sand bed the best thing would be less than an inch or more than 3 inches. Anything in-between is unacceptable :)
 
Thats what i was leaning towards nate. Besides i will not have much time to wast waiting for it to dry.

Dave
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9997567#post9997567 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by nwrogers
I always use the colored backgrounds because I hate painting and I never have the patience to wait for it to dry. As for the sand bed the best thing would be less than an inch or more than 3 inches. Anything in-between is unacceptable :)
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Sorry for the hijack, but why is that?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9998214#post9998214 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by nwrogers
The blue background or the sand bed depth?
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Sorry - the sand depth. I'm thinking my current sand bed is approx 2" deep (I'll look more closely when I get home tonight).
 
Well from my understanding it is like this and remember I am not a scientist just a guy trying to explain what I have read the best I can :) The only sand bed that is actually useful is one that is 3 inches or deeper ideally 4 inches if in the main display. If you want to have a sand bed that helps reduce nitrates, offers some buffering capacity, and/or provides a place for microorganisms live it needs to be deep. Anything less than 3 inches is purely for esthetic purposes because it can’t offer the same benefits of a deep sand bed except for looking really good. Having a deep sand bed has some downfalls as well as benefits. One major downfall is that DSBs can go foul after several years. If a DSB goes foul it can potential kill everything. Now I don’t know this from experience but this is what I have read. Some people would argue that if maintained properly this won’t happen but who knows. What some people do with DSBs is to take the tank down every 3 - 5 years or so and replace the entire sand bed with a new one. They may keep a few cups of the old sand bed to reseed the new one. Another option is to have no sand at all but that has it’s downfalls as well. People with no sand bed often complain about having high nitrates and end up having to install a remote deep sand bed to bring the nitrates down. Not to mention IMO it looks bad. So why is a shallow sand bed good? Well, It’s not. It doesn’t really do anything other than look really good. If you decide to go with a shallow sand bed you will probably end up installing a RDSB just like if you went bare bottom. The big difference IMO is the SSB looks better than bare bottom and it is not likely to crash like a DSB. Also it is a lot easier to replace a DSB when it is in a bucket or in your sump rather than in your main display! So that is why I choose a SSB with a RDSB. DSBs are great IMO but if you can put them anywhere but the main display you are better off…

Here is some reading about the benefits of DSBs…

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/deepsandbeds.htm

Lastly I don’t think having a 2” sand bed in your tank is going to hurt anything Jackson, I just think it is not helping as much as it could and is just there for good looks. If you want to maximize your sand beds buffering capacity and natural nitrate reduction (NNR) ability you have to make it deeper or install one elsewhere.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9998593#post9998593 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by nwrogers
Lastly I don’t think having a 2” sand bed in your tank is going to hurt anything Jackson, I just think it is not helping as much as it could and is just there for good looks. If you want to maximize your sand beds buffering capacity and natural nitrate reduction (NNR) ability you have to make it deeper or install one elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Ah, ok... that clears it up. I had read some things about how a sand bed needs to be 4+" deep to really be effective, but when you said less than 1 or more than 3 I thought there was some advantage to a sand depth of under 1".

Thanks for the clerification.
 
Right the reason I say less than an inch is because unless you are going to have a least 3 inches or more there is no need to waste the sand. You can just save it for your RDSB :)
 
A deep sand bed creates a low oxegen low light enviroment that bacteria thrive in. The bacteria are what eats the waste as it sinks deep into the bed. Thats the reason for the depth. It has been said that at 4" this can take place.
A shallow sand bed does not provide the right enviroment for these bacteria and the sand acts as a sink for waste same as a deep bed but no bacteria to eat it. A very shallow sand bed say 1" is easly to vacum and not so deep that if you have them in your tank, your critters can get to the waste and eat it. Anything more and your talking about alot more time to keep it clean.
At 2" your critters probly wont go that deep and youll need to vacum up twice as much sand when cleaning. So less is more unless more is what you want then more then 4" :)
 
Are you going to drill the tank?

A mag 12 will work for a closed loop IME. There are better pumps for this application but if you already have a mag 12 you could use it.
 
Well you could go with a pressure rated external pump. Mag drive pumps are not really external pumps even thought I use them that way :) I have never used a pump other than the Mag 12 on a closed loop so I really can't recommend one but maybe someone else may be able to. Since you’re not drilling the tank the Mag 12 may be a good pump to use especially if you use a SCWD and some penductors. Here are some good instructions for building a closed loop without drilling the tank and using a mag pump + a SCWD...

http://www.melevsreef.com/closedloop.html
 
Thats cool but the back of my tank is exposed. Very nice setup tho. Maybe I could hide it some how.

Dave
 
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