DSB /Aptasia - starting over

[thardin68]

Hello,

I have a 180 Gallon reef tank with a DSB and about 250# of rock. I have a sump and refugium in the basement. The refugium has about 600# of sand and had plenty of life in it. I had a major aptasia issue (thousands/ along with a need to limit my maintainence for a few months since work required I be away from the tank). I gave away my livestock and turned the lights off.

Lights have ben off now for quite a few months. Water circulating, but no skimming going on. Almost all of the aptasia have died off.

I plan to re-start the system, but I was curous if I should discard the deep sand bed and DSB in the refugium. I have been considering a change to bare bottom. I am also conidering cooking the rock to ensure no Aptasia remain. Anyway, any thoughts about what my options are and what I should be looking out for?

ANy input would be appreciated.

 

[cindre2000]

You do realize that aptasia are not photosynthetic, which means that cutting off the lights and cooking the rock will not really do anything. The easiest sure fire way to make sure all the aptasia is gone is to dry the rock out in the sun. However, you could attempt to 'control' the aptasia by putting rocks into holding tank and killing each one with kalk or some other method. Then if you keep a butterfly or a couple peppermint shrimp, the aptasia should not come back.

As for DSB:

I personally would keep the refugium DSB. As far as I know, DSB do work and if you have a mature working one, I would not get rid of it. However, in you main display, removing the sand bed would allow you to really ramp up the flow, which is the main reason people do it. So I guess you just got to decide if you want to ramp up the flow a whole bunch.