coffeetwitch
Aquarium Advice Addict
does anyone have an opinion on the subject?
coffeetwitch said:why is it that tanks with a dsb do not last as long as those with out? i mean that if one was better than another or what not there would never be the question of dsb or no. you know? kind of like water, if you want a fish you need water. its an absolute.
...they could get about 5-7 years and then things would start going downhill...
I want a large goby and they tend to eat the creatures in the sand that provide the mechanism for converting nitrates to nitrogen gas.
kay-bee19 said:Looks like I'm in that 5-7yr window, my reef tank (with 3.5"-4.5" sandbed) has been running for over 5 years...no issues...yet.
The nitrate to nitrogen gas process in the DSB is performed by microscopic anaerobic bacteria residing in (and requiring) an environment several inches beneath the surface of the sand. Maybe the goby's impact on the process is just disturbence of this oxygen-free environment rather than the consumption of creatures?
i've never utilized a DSB for filtration. for this current tank i do, sort of have a dsb. it's 6" of sand, but it's in between a lot of limestone the size of ballast (pics in the build thread). will it cause me problems? we'll see, but it's doubtful since it's only a temporary tank until i can construct something larger. after the winter.
i've heard conflicting info about deep beds. some say that they don't last long (as stated above), then others say they offer excellent nitrate reduction with very little maintenance. they say you must stir the top a bit here and there, so a sand sifting fish would not be detrimental to it...on the contrary, they would be a help, as long as it wasn't an engineer goby or something that digs giant holes and buries corals and rock on a daily basis.
my argument is - why doesn't the sand bottom of the ocean nuke it? it's super deep. shouldn't it be spewing poisons on a regular basis?
coffeetwitch said:0 trates would be great. but now that i have it in place im thinking the swimming room would be better than letting a water change slide for an extra week.
does anyone have an easy or good way of removing sand?
An aquarium and the ocean are very different environments, why do diseases that exist in the ocean relatively harmless kill the inhabitants of our tanks? Because they are different environments. No one does a water change in the ocean, yet it survives as well. I think comparing a Dsb tank vs non Dsb tank is much closer than comparing Dsb tank to the ocean. I have a Dsb, and like I said before I have no detectable nitrates even with irregular water changes. Show me a tank 10, 20, 30 years old with a Dsb and I would reconsider the longevity. I have searched and searched and can't find one older than 7.5 years. That person, cmor1701d, even told me to do a remote sand bed if I wanted the tank to run a few decades.
Also, the OP was asking about a Dsb in a fowlr system, where there is really no need to have zero nitrates, so for longevity sake, that is why I lean towards no in this case. I would want the space for more fish!