wseaton
Aquarium Advice Activist
Are you suggesting we remove our sand beds vis a syphon and replace them on a regular schedule?
I'm suggesting, on occasion, you stuff the tube into your sand bed at random locations as regular maintenence and siphon out the metal ash and other inert materials that are the real cause of the problem of a DSB going critical mass. If you don't totally 'suck the life' out of your entire DSB at one sitting, you should *never* have a problem and keep your DSB healthy pretty much forever.
I agree that no two tanks are entirely the same, but the chemical/biological processes are the same regardless. We change water in our tanks on a regular basis, run enough power heads to wash a load of laundry, dope our tanks with trace elements, and yet we're led to believe that we can't disturb several hundred pounds of inert sand. I didn't get into marine aquaria to raise worms in sand and keep them healthy.
DSB's do work, but the extent is the real controversy, and I'm not disputing their effectiveness because I have them myself. My own theory is that given enough time and good care, an abundance of LR will soon take over duties of Nitrate reduction simply by appoximation effect. It simply takes longer for this to happen since a dense sand bed is an initially better and less competitive place for nitrate reducers to thrive when a tank is first set up. This explains why the DSB can be removed from a mature tank and not disrupt nor cause a nitrate spike, yet new tanks are often a headache in terms of nitrate if they don't have a DSB.