hi i am planning a 6ft tank with a 5ft sump and am hoping to have a dsb in the sump and was wondering if there was a good book or web site to explain how all this works :thanx:
instantsquid
24-08-05, 22:30
Simon G's website has a good beginner's guide to DSB's
http://www.reef-eden.com/DSBs.htm
Ian :thumbsup:
In addition to which, there's Ron Shimek's section on www.reefcentral.com, plus his articles on Reefcentral's magazine.
The keys to understanding are the various biological cycles on Earth...carbon, nitrogen etc. etc. If you follow these, the theory of a DSB is basic - so don't just Google "DSB", also check these out. If you don't understand these cycles, then you will not understand how a DSB is possible.
Most people who say that a DSB can't work haven't done their homework here. Of course, badly managed, it can fail, but that's a different issue.
kim
fully agree,
when it comes to DSB's you really only need to read SI-G and Dr Ron's stuff found it invaluable when deciding about my DSB.
I haven't read it but Dr ron's sand secrets is supposed to be good, i printed out masses of his articles from RC.
Go onto www.saltcorner.com the site run by Bob Goemans. In the guest articles is one by Roy Meeke of Interfish in Wakefield. Very informative author regarding plenum systems.
HTH
Nick
:thanx: for all the replys
looks like i have a lot of reading to do now will let ya know how i get on :thanx: :thumbsup:
I am sure that most of you have read Dr Ron's Sand bed article, (if not I will post it here), but this is a section from one of his other articles which is not seen as much. A little more technical, but as with all his stuff, very interesting.
To maintain a diverse benthos you need the appropriate sediments.
The sediment particle distribution should not be uniform. Particle diameters should range from coarse sand (2.0+ mm) to fine sand(0.063 mm). The sediments should be skewed so that about 60 percent of the sediment is between 0.5mm and 0.062 mm in diameter (coarse sand to very fine sand). As far as the animals are concerned the sediment mineral composition is unimportant. This sediment particle distribution facilitates water percolation and promotes organism utilization.
There should be a appropriate innoculum of organisms from live sand. The appropriate fauna will not be found on live rock. The aquarist should avoid of major infaunal predators except in the largest of systems. This means NO "sand-sifting" animals. These are sifting the sand to feed on the organisms in it. You want those organisms - so the predators should not be added. On the other hand, burrowing sand swallowers such as sea cucumbers or sea urchins are fine. They disturb the sediments and primarily eat bacteria not animals.
It is normal for sand beds to accumulate fine particulate matter. This is mostly fecal pellets and is utilized by both the sediment infauna and bacteria as food and substrate.
Siphoning, disturbing or cleaning of the sediments will result in significant removal or mortality of sediment organisms and may severely damage the functional aspect of the sand bed.
Examining the morphology of both the individual organisms and the whole system will allow aquarists to treat their captive reefs as biological systems and facilitate their maintenance.
The message of the functional morphology of reef organisms
The role of the benthos in the reef aquarium ecosystem is to maintain energy and material flow through the system allowing a more normal captive reef to develop
Can you get the coral to use a larger percent of those products?
No. The limitations of the product use are set by the First and Second Laws of thermodynamics and about a billion years of evolution.
how old are his systems with all this stuff in the sand?
My system is about 2 years old.
And what kinda sand is it?
The sand is aragonitic sand, a mixture of oolitic sand, live sand and general goo...
How much do you feed your tank per day, and what size is your tank?"
I have three systems; 42 hex (low light), 60 gal hex (Carpet Anemone tank) and a 42 gal. reef.
I feed about 1-2 table spoons of thawed frozen plankton, and diced fish and krill per day.
What are your recommendations on sand bed depth and sand composition?
The composition was given in the body of the talk so I will leave that up to you to dig out. I think the minimum depth should be about 4 inches (10 cm).
The maximum depth, between 6-8 in (15-20 cm).
You want a good deep bed or the sand fauna will not set up housekeeping and survive. rs
In starting a new tank what percentage live vs dead sand would you use to promote good growth of sand dwelling organisims?
Get as much live sand as your budget can support and get a little from several sources to maximize the diversity of the sand critters. rs
Any specific instructions for seeding dead sand with live sand?
Not really. I generally have just added live sand to the surface of a dead sand bed. You don't have to mix the stuff up. The animals will find their way into it just fine.
Ron, can you please define sand sifters and burrowers a bit further with some examples?
Good question. These are terms that are floating around a couple of mailing lists.
Sand sifters - animals that sift sand to get food out of it. Sleeper gobies, etc. Also some burrowing sea stars.
These animals are sifting through the sand to eat the sand fauna that you want to maintain... bad news for the sand critters.
Burrowers are animals like burrowing sea cucumbers that move through the sediment and eat it. They eat off the bacteria and leave the sediment
The sediment is recolonized by bacteria and this growth stimulates the function of the biological filter.
So burrowers are good guys - burrowing sea cukes, sea urchins, some worms. The only problem is that if they are happy, you never see 'em.
Kinda hard to spend $$$ on animals you never see. But, it is a good investment.rs
At what point,(months, years, etc) would you consider a sand bed mature?
Depending on the stability of the tank, probably after about 18 months. Many of the animals reproduce freguently, on the order of months.
But some are annuals. The bed is mature if it remains stable through a few reproductive cycles.
These cycles, by the way, feed the corals with larvae, etc. Good food. Yumm.
Have you ever had a problem with hydrogen sufate (sulfide? Im not a chemist) and if so, what he does about it?
Only when I tried a plenum. Bad news, there. In my sand beds, never have had a problem.
Should people run a sand bed zone, seperate from the main tank? any benefit/disadvantage to that approach?
The only place I could see this as an advantage would be in a very high current tank.
In normal tanks, you need to feed the animals, and you need the sand bed to accumulate, process, and export the excess food, and debris.
So, I would say, keep the sand bed in the main tank. One in the sump would be a good refugium, but it would not work as well as material processing site.
If most aquariums have far less organisms in the sand than they should, and the appropriate fauna will not be found on live rock, Where would you suggest getting good live sand from?
Any and all sources. Try to get some coming in from a real reef. Floridian or Gulf of Mexico sand is okay for starters, but these animals are primarily temperate.
They won't survive long at reef temperatures. Check around with newsgroups about the most recent sand orders, though. There is a lot of variation.
How can we check our own sand beds for infaunal population densities?
Hard to do.
I take about tube about 1 cm in diameter and remove a plug of sand. This I examine with a microscope.
You can remove about a cubic cm of sand with a turkey baster or some other such tool. Put it in a flat bottomed glass dish.
Cover with sea water and swirl to spread the sand out. Put it on piece of black paper. Let it stand for about 5 minutes with no disturbance.
Then shine a bright light on it and examine with a hand lens. You should find at least 4 or 5 worms in the sediments, you will be able to see them by the movement they cause in the sand.
Any less than 2 worms is not good news...
Any advice on how to siphon waste out of the sand without screwing up the fauna? or should you even mess with the sand bed?
Never siphon it out. It is the food for the sand bed fauna.
Many people would like to know the specifics of your tanks do you have a web site?
No. I have too much going on to maintain a web site. Too klutzy, too.
I will be glad to talk about my systems on reeflist, though.
Or by email at: rshimek@imt.net
What would be the optimal flow rate over the sand (cm/s)?
It should and will be variable. In most tanks if the water flow is strong enuf to disturb the sand surface, you can armor it with mini-riprap such as GARF grundge or crushed coral.
It is hard to get too much flow, but you also want areas of very slow flow. This way you maximize the number of ecological niches in your system.
That maximization facilitates the material exchange processes.
So.. vary it a lot. rs.
If a LFS has live sand with no obvious to the naked eye sand fauna, could it still be good live sand?
Yes, but it is unlikely. I would order my sand by mail order. Every transfer step filters and kills some of the sand fauna. rs.
It has been said that live sand does not ship well and most animals in the sand die. Is this true and what can be done to make sure this does not happen?
It certainly can happen. Generally, you expect a fair mortality. Howsoever, sand animals are adapted to disturbance.
Sand is a harsh environment, and generally the animals are pretty rugged. Often enough will survive to repopulate the sand, and innoculate the rest of the bed in short order.
If the sand were shipped moist, not wet, in tightly packed bags, kept cool, and given a blast of O2 before the shipping mortality would be minimized.
Not much we as recipients can do though, except get it into the tanks ASAP.
So in recommending no sand sifters, should one sift their own sand using their hand, spoon etc?
No. No sifting is necessary. I have done some calculations (for an upcoming sand bed article) that show the normal activities of the worms in my tank are sufficient to turn all the sediment over every two days.
This doesn't happen, of course, but there is sufficient disturbance that the sand never clumps, etc. rs.
Do you have any expierence with the kits offerend by Inland Aquatics?
No.
They sound good, but a friend near here got one that was not particularly rich. So I think there is a bit of a quality control problem.rs.
I have seen some black sand for sale, is it any good to use in the aquarium and where does it come from?
Damifino where it is from. It might be lava sand, and it would probably be fine for aquaria.
However, aragonitic sand has the advantange of providing a reservoir of dissolvable calcium carbonate, and that is often a good thing.
The starfish commonly known as the whitle linkia burrowing starfish, good, bad, indifferent?
Bad. It is eating the sand fauna. I don't think anyone can maintain one successfully with a functional sand bed in any less than maybe a 500 gallon system.
They are really bad news for a lot of worms.
Thanks Ron!
If you want the full article, here is a link, settle down for a long read :)
http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog/r_shimek_090698.html
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