Starboard, Who's done it?

[Neo_TA]

solbby, I can understand your fear of going against the great Bomber. DSB is a dirty dirty word with the guy.
I like like my 4-6" DSB and I'm having a real hard time not just doing it again. But like Jackson, I just can't get the water clean enough for my SPS to explode all be it his are doing great now ( I have a few fish)

. Growth rates are slow and the colors are only OK. Its not even that I have much of the way of algae growth. Just looking for perfection I guess.
I do feel bad for that guy that tried the epoxy in the tank directly that hurts.

I'm still contimplatind doing a remote DSB, and or throwing an inch or two of sand on the starboard. Uuugh! so many decisions

[ March 22, 2005, 09:21 AM: Message edited by: Neo_TA ]

 

[ShaunW]

WOW Rich, that is some tank your going to be setting up, . 8000+ GPH flow is going to be amazing to see.

I totally agree with you when you said:
"It really all comes down to your husbandry."

That is the key to success, in my opinion, also.

 

[ShaunW]

Guys I've been studying

. My topic: Oligotrophic bacterioplankton and the role it plays in SPS survival and reproduction. My secondary topic is: SPS nutritional requirements.

Since I have access to ALL the scientific journals present in the world, I am going to the marine biology field to get answers.

So I found a very interesting journal article yesterday, its title is "Oligotropic Bacterioplakton with a Novel Single-Cell Life Strategy". The jist of the article is that it seems that oligotrophic bacteria (marine bacteria living in the low nutrient ocean) do not form biofilms (grow on rock/substrate, any surface present), but instead have a life strategy in the aquatic environment in which dispersal is promoted to optimize cell access to substrates. The free living bacteria have the option to explore the dissolved organic matter continuum lacking surfaces (a good source of food for the bacteria, which becomes a good source of food for corals). This environment consists of organic matter ranging from the size of monomers to strings and aggregates of biopolymers that produce a microscopic matrix in the water, which promotes single-cell dispersal instead of colony formation by bacteria.

So, the crud pulled out by our highly efficient skimmers is probably oligotrophic bacteria (better known as the "most successful organism on earth", and an extremely important member in the reef food chain).

[ March 22, 2005, 12:06 PM: Message edited by: solbby ]

 

[jhale]

does that mean i should not vacuum my marina board bottom?
my reasons for starting out with a BB were like Rich, I wanted to have as much flow as possible. right now there is a CL return sweeping the bottom of my tank, it piles all the detritus to one side of the tank. I may be changing this as I may end up with different coral other than just SPS in the tank.
I think the BB vs DSB debate is interesting, but it comes down to your husbandry methods as well. even Bomber in his massive thread has told people that going BB is not necessary if your going to keep LPS and softies.
I always wanted to know what my skimmer was pulling out, I guess since it looks green/brown and icky I always thought it was working to pull out bad stuff. now I know a new term, oligotrophic bacteria, or the "good stuff".
with a BB you don't have the two different bacteria populations competing against each other, but there are oligotrophic bacteria present that are beneficial to the coral, and my skimmer is removing them from the water.
I don't want to be the person to experiment and pull the skimmer off my tank, but how much skimming is necessary? if the skimmer is taking the good and bad out of the water how do you find the right balance?

 

[jhale]

also I don't think people on RC are against shallow sand beds, I think many people with BB's do miss the aesthetic appeal of the sand. that's why they started to epoxy sand to the starboard.
it's the extreme amount of flow that people have that makes having sand in the tank impossible.
I'm sure you would get some people arguing that you still have to clean the sand, but even with a BB you have to keep the bottom clean. It's not a magical substance that makes detritus disappear. of course if you have 20,000gph going through your system nothing but the rocks and SPS have a chance of staying in place. It comes down to each persons system and what kind of animals they want to keep. If your going for the baddest SPS tank around then sand is not your friend.
Solbby, I think people on RC would be interested in your research. If you don't want to deal with them at least you know people here will appreciate it.

 

[ShaunW]

I think that it comes down to finding the happy equilibrium between - not having an overabundance of "rotting" organic matter vs. enough organic matter to feed the fauna and flora present. Real reefs in the ocean have the most biomass/organic matter of any ecosystem on the planet, it is not a sterile environment!

Stagnant dendritis at the bottom of a starboard reef will rot and needs to be removed or resuspended. That same dendritis would be food for worms and other inhabitants in a DSB/Shallow sandbed.

The oligotrophic bacteria in suspension also probably need a happy medium, and their happiness must affect the entire tank. Too much is bad, too little, also bad.

I personally believe that the engineers responsible for the next latest and greatest skimmer (I can just hear them saying "We Need More Bubbles!!! MORE BUBBLES DAMIT!") forgot their biology classes if they ever paid attention in the first place (I didn't in engineering class, so I can't blame them,

). They should have asked the question during their R&D sessions, should we really remove every last particle of organic matter down to the last part per trillion, is that biologically helpful to an aquarium?

Once again it comes down to understanding the system that you setup and applying good husbandry methods to your specific system.

[ March 22, 2005, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: solbby ]

 

[jhale]

I'm still going to remove the crud at the bottom of the tank with each water change

I'm sticking with my skimmer rated for my size tank. so far the frag's of SPS I have have been growing well. I'll take that as a sign the tank has a balance of everything they like. even things that I can't test for.
as for the BB I'm hoping it will be covered with something in the near future. See Rich, zoo's are good for something after all
I'm actually going to go with an idea sollby had and try to get yumma's to cover the bottom of my tank. it will be called a "soft BB" for future reference a SBB. as opposed to the CEBB, coraline encrusted BB, or the FSBB, fake sand BB. and in a nod to the poor guy in the thread sollby showed the dreaded CGBB, the cracked glass BB. ouch that hurts just looking at it.

 

[bad coffee]

I like my 1" sandbed. Makes it look natural!

Solbby, how do you have access to all the sci. journals? Are you a librarian?

B

 

[ShaunW]

Originally posted by bad coffee:
I like my 1" sandbed. Makes it look natural!

Solbby, how do you have access to all the sci. journals? Are you a librarian?

B

LOL, I work at Cornell University, but not in the library, .

My side job, when I am not taking care of my reeftank (and studying marine bacterial biology), is a scientist.

 

[jackson6745]

Solbby AKA the librarian mad scientist....lol

Well, I tried to scrape the sand off the starboard....no luck. The epoxy really has a firm grip on it! Oh well, I guess i'll have to deal with the coralline covered sandbed

Shaun, I will probably start a progress thread tonight. I have alomost all of the equipment including tank, stand, and canopy, pumps, skimmer, reactor, top off, controllers etc. (A big Thanks to Pierce for making my stand and canopy ) BUT, the sump that I planned on using doesn't fit under the tank Yet another set back. So, I have to look for a smaller acrylic sump. I am very excited to get this new tank setup but at the same time these little problems are stressing the heck out of me

 

[nanoreefer22]

Since we are on the topic does is make sense to make a barebottom softie tank? Or is this something that should mainly be done with sps? I'm a little scared to go SPS. =(

 

[Neo_TA]

All in all there really no perfect answer. In my opinon if I were doing a soft coral only tank I would deinately go with a DSB. I just love the ecosysytem that it creates. Don't be scared of Hard corals. As long as you have the proper equipment its not that bad. Allthough it is a decent amount of equipment though, just don't skimp.

Sorry to hear that Jackson. 6 months down the road it will be so layered with coraline I'm sure nobody will ever never notice.

I think I'm going to go with the starboard bottom with a 1/2"-1" layer of sand on the the bottom and not worry about syphoning it out during water changes. And just replace it occasionally as needed. If it doesn't work all well. But maybe the middle ground is the best.

 

[ShaunW]

Originally posted by Neo_TA:

I think I'm going to go with the starboard bottom with a 1/2"-1" layer of sand on the the bottom and not worry about syphoning it out during water changes. And just replace it occasionally as needed. If it doesn't work all well. But maybe the middle ground is the best.

I did some additional reading,

, and found the following. From one of the original papers that got the whole DSB vs BB going (Takayanagi and Yamada, Effects of Benthic Flux on Short Term Variations of Nutrients in Aburatsubo Bay, J. of Oceanography, vol 55, pp.463, 1999)
http://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/JO/pdf/5503/55030463.pdf
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=263482&perpage=25&pagenumber=3

The concentration of ammonia increases with depth to 15cm and remains constant below that depth. The concentration of phosphate also increases with depth to a maximum value at 10cm and gradually decreases below that depth.

10cm = 5inches. At 2cm or below (1/2 to 1 inch sandbed) the phosphate level is minimal to non-existant, same with ammonia (from the paper, one of the holy grail papers in the whole DSB vs BB debate). Therefore, no DSB issues (leaching of phosphate or ammonia/nitrate) exist with the shallow sandbed of 2 inches or below.

 

[Neo_TA]

Thats a great article, thanks.

To me it looks like the chart reads appx.

NH4
2cm 30-40 microM
3cm 60-70 microM
5cm 100 microM

PO4
2cm 4 microM
3cm 10 microM

Am I reading that right? I'll assume M stands for Mole?
Also realatively what effect does for instance at the 2cm level do those levels have? They do look insignificant.

Definatly leading me to a 2cm or so sand bed over the starboard. And replace as needed.

 

[Neo_TA]

by the way

2 centimeter = 0.7874016 inch

 

[jhale]

I love the metric system, especially when I have to deal with a measurement like that. our systems do not mix well. what happened to us in the 70's?

is there an easy way to explain why phosphate will not build up in a 1"-2" sand bed. what prevents it from accumulating?
do the results stay the same no matter what the depth of the bottom is?

I did not know the DSB vs. BB debate included shallow sand beds, did people say shallow sand beds would have the same problems as a DSB?

 

[ShaunW]

Originally posted by Neo_TA:
Thats a great article, thanks.

To me it looks like the chart reads appx.

NH4
2cm 30-40 microM
3cm 60-70 microM
5cm 100 microM

PO4
2cm 4 microM
3cm 10 microM

Am I reading that right? I'll assume M stands for Mole?
Also realatively what effect does for instance at the 2cm level do those levels have? They do look insignificant.

Definatly leading me to a 2cm or so sand bed over the starboard. And replace as needed.

With all scientific measurement there is standard error. I would predict that at the 2cm and below you are starting to get into standard error issues as you approach the zero measurement. Meaning those values listed for 2cm could also easily be zero.

Good catch I should have put 1 inch at the final sentence instead of 2 inch, opps, .

[ March 23, 2005, 05:05 PM: Message edited by: solbby ]

 

[ShaunW]

Originally posted by jhale:

is there an easy way to explain why phosphate will not build up in a 1"-2" sand bed. what prevents it from accumulating?
do the results stay the same no matter what the depth of the bottom is?

The simple answer is that anaerobic bacteria would not be present in a shallow sand bed and anoxic conditions would not be able to manifest.

Originally posted by jhale:

I did not know the DSB vs. BB debate included shallow sand beds, did people say shallow sand beds would have the same problems as a DSB?

The BB loyalists are as bad as the original DSB loyalists. They believe that any sand present at the bottom of an aquarium housing SPS is BAD (and will prevent growth, color, and cause RTNing of any and all SPS immediately, etc..........).

SSB just gets lumped in with DSB.

[ March 23, 2005, 05:16 PM: Message edited by: solbby ]

 

[jhale]

:bump: of the week

 

[trueblackpercula]

went BB with starboard and my tank is super clean. As for when the tread started algea in the fuax sand bed can be cleaned up with blue legs hermits in no time.