Sugar sand for dsb in fuge?

[budddman]

I read an article in this months Coral mag, which suggested to use the smallest grain size available to optimize your dsb. The thinking according to the article was that smaller grains will make it harder for the oxygen rich water to reach the lower parts of the sand bed. Thus at shallower depths you can have a nice denitrifying dsb at 4 inches instead of going a full 6.

Any thoughts or comments on this?

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[reefs4life]

Well it makes sense because the whole point of a DSB is to home nitrifying bacteria so techanically with smaller grain sand you have more surface area for bacterial growth compared to larger grain sand. At the same time smaller grains do pack better and like the article states it does porvide an oxygen-poor environment which nitrifying bacteria need since they are anaerobic (meaning they don't need and can't be exposed to oxygen to do what they do). Personally I don't like that sugar grain sand, it looks terrible IMO but then again it is just a DSB that no one has to see to I guess it wouldn't matter

 

[budddman]

Thanks, any other opinions out there?

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[KathyC]

I read an article in this months Coral mag, which suggested to use the smallest grain size available to optimize your dsb. The thinking according to the article was that smaller grains will make it harder for the oxygen rich water to reach the lower parts of the sand bed. Thus at shallower depths you can have a nice denitrifying dsb at 4 inches instead of going a full 6.

Any thoughts or comments on this?

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using Reefs

That makes perfect sense.