Schism
Aquarium Advice Addict
Wy Renegade said:Nice clarification, but not the way your initial post reads in regards to "feeding." So just for clarification, you maintained this same star in your tank with weekly siphonings for that entire four year period?
Sorry for not being more clear. But yes same star. Weekly or biweekly siphoning. Also this star has been in 2 different tanks in the past 4 years.
Wy Renegade said:In regards to the microfauna, that statement is completely accurate. If you allow the debris from your weekly siphonings to settle and looked through it closely with a microscope or even a very good magnifying glass, you are going to find all kinds of microfauna within that water; from micro brittlestars to bacteria. Those organisms live within the sandbed in the water and on the sandgrains and when you remove that water and sandgrains by siphoning you do in fact reduce or deplete the microfauna by default. I'm correct in that they fail in the majority of aquariums, do they fail in all no. As I stated, they are always going to be exceptions to the rule, but encouraging those who do not understand how to properly maintain these animals to keep them is a huge error in my opinion. And simply saying proper feeding isn't going to cut it.
Yes fully aware of microfuana. However, siphoning can not deplete the sand bed of microfuana. Put my sand under a microscope and you will see the same microfuana. Ive done this btw. For some reason people tend to think your siphoning all life out of your bed, its impossible to do. They reproduce quickly and not every area of your tank is subject to siphoning, not every grain of sand.
Wy Renegade said:Clarification, clarification, clarification. No were in your initial posts did you account for any of these clarifications. When posting general broadsweeping statements or threads like "siphoning your sandbed" proper clarification is needed if your intent is to educate. Someone who doesn't know any better and simply read your post and then went out and started completely vaccuming their entire DSB every week is destined for failure no?
This thread was not directly aimed at DSB's. Failure? No. But your right i should have clarified. My apologies.
Wy Renegade said:The simple fact is, no sandbed processes phosphates, and you can't claim to be processing your sandbed clean enough on a weekly basis to remove all phosphate and yet leave enough nutrients behind to support the microfauna required to support that sand-sifting star. The two points are counter intuitive. If in fact enough phosphates (i.e. nutrients) are being left behind to support the microfauna, then there are enough phosphates being left behind to bind up in the sand and liverock.
Correct, no sand bed processes phosphates. You can not possibly remove all phosphate from a tank. And your do not need to or would you want to, phosphorus is required for life. Its also being produced on a constant basis. Microfuana can not starve itself out from lack of phosphate because its simple not possible.
Also phosphate only bind to sand and rock in quite excessive amounts. This is what causes many DSB's to crash. DSB's can be very misleading and most dont understand how to take care of them.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/9/chemistry
Wy Renegade said:Again, good clarification, but need for others to understand your point. However, to say that the effect is null is completely inaccurate. The fact is that siphoning of that portion of the sandbed depletes the microfauna severely and it has to reseed from the unsiphoned half of the sandbed. This is in fact why only once or twice a year siphonings are recommended no?
No. yes it will rid of a small amount of microfuana. The problem with a complete siphoning often is the disturbance of the anaerobic and anoxic zones preventing denitrification. These zones must be low and devoid of oxygen.
Wy Renegade said:In regards to the three zones, can you please clarify your position on this. Anoxic by definition means without oxygen, the same as anaerobic, so I'm curious to see on what basis you are trying to seperate the oxygen depleted layer into two seperate layers.
anaerobic is low oxygen. It is impossible to go from oxygen to no oxygen. Anaerobic is the in-between.
Wy Renegade said:True enough, however a DSB can be properly maintained without siphoning. It can be done with the regular reintroduction of the proper microfauna which burrows and tunnels its way through the DSB maintaining the functionality of the DSB by doing so. That is not maintainance free. You are quite correct in your assertion that a DSB needs to be maintained. However you are incorrect in that the only way to do so properly is by siphoning. There is always more than one way to do things properly in this hobby.
False, again microfuana do not process phosphates. I do agree there is more than one way of doing things properly. However the phosphate issue of not siphoning hasnt been addressed.
Excessive phosphate will result in the binding to sand and live rock and also will only be solvable with the entire sand bed being replaced.
Wy Renegade said:Actually some recent research would tend to disagree with you. Some studies I've seen indicate that phosphate binds into the sand and LR even with a properly maintained aquarium and sandbed. I fully understand why phosphate is not a problem with a properly maintained fully funtioning system. I believe that part of our differences here is in term of how you and I are defining maintained. You appear to be trying to assert that there is only one proper way to maintain a sandbed and I am simply disagreeing with you.
Disagreement is fine, and i dont mind discussion. I would like to know how you properly maintain a DSB then. Wondering where your phosphate is going then.
Wy Renegade said:I never proposed any such thing. I proposed the addition of a source of algae as a solution to the removal of phosphates. Which without the actual removal of that algae from time to time is also not effective, as algae binds but does not remove phosphates. I'm not proposing a left along DSB at all, I'm simply stating that a DSB can properly be maintained without siphoning..
If by algae you are referring to Macro algaes in a refugium then yes they will 'help' remove phosphate but in no way do they remove it from a DSB. These anoxic zones are free from oxygen, a refugium will only slowly deal with free floating inorganic orthophosphate. However they do nothing for Organic phosphates trapped in the sand bed.
Also would you not agree siphoning to be the simplest, economical and most proficient way of removing all forms of phosphates and organic matter from a system/sand bed.
A DSB was originally contrived to be a fix or system of dealing with nitrate removal. Adding an algae tank to deal with the DSB sound like your fixing fixes now, instead of the problem? Agree?
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