Garf plenum building

[DaveM]

So I have been reading up on this idea. Has anyone had any experiences with them.

 

[Smitty]

Can you give a little more information about it? I haven't heard of it and didn't see anything in a quick search.

 

[DaveM]

Www.garf.org
It is part of their bulletproof reef systems. It is pretty interesting

 

[nxb161]

Dave, search the forum, I believe there are a few threads on this stuff.

 

[Henry405]

It looks like an undergravel system to me

 

[DaveM]

I do believe it is just a fancy under gravel filter. But has anyone tried it? What if I built the plenum in my eshopps sump? Would it do the same thing?

 

[Smitty]

From the description I read it sounds like the same use as a deep sand bed. There are people who do similar things to their DSB as was mentioned, but I really don't know how much benefit you will get from it.

It looks mostly like they are trying to sell CUC on that site. I really hope those tanks they used to show off the CUC aren't their own. Those tanks looked really bad (at least that one at the bottom of the page).

 

[DaveM]

I think the cuc tanks are test tanks. They let them get really bad and then put a ton of cuc in and watch the changes

 

[DaveM]

Interesting website though

 

[Henry405]

From some quick research about undergravel systems for another thread, the benefit is a biological filter and less mechanical and chemical. The water runs through the sand where bacteria is to break down ammonia and nitrites and then goes to the bottom where a pump pushes the water back out.

I've also read about the gravel being packed down overtime causing flow restrictions. I personally would not use it because gravel leaves areas in between for water to flow, but sand would be more pack together thus limiting flow quite a lot. This is from pure observation of gravel and sand with no research involve though. I could be wrong