lduncan

:roll: You still don't get it. Rather than reading Dr Rons rubbish, read some of the stuff I posted. I've yet to find any information which agrees with him on how DSB's work. Sand beds in nature are cycling nutrients just like they do in tanks. Where does phyto get it's nutrients from in the ocean to grow... sediments releasing nutrients. "Nutrient upwellings" may be a familiar term, it's sediments releasing nutrients. Red tides, Florida blackwater events, lake and harbour eutrophication. Are all natural events which are due to sediments, which have initially been sinking nutrients, starting to release them. It's a big cycle, phyto blooms fed by nutrients leaking from sediment, it then dies along with other animals, they sink to the bottom where bacteria store and hold the nutrients within the sediment until the suboxic zone rises closer to the sediment water interface, and it starts leaking nutrients and the cycle repeats. from http://www.icsu-scope.org/downloadpubs/ ... ter18.html Eutrophication: http://lepo.it.da.ut.ee/~olli/eutr/html ... k_100.html From http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extens ... /phos.html It's all there, it's what sand does in nature, and what it does in our tanks. The information which supports this is endless. ... the information which supports Dr Ron's view point is well... non existent as yet. Also reeftec, don't take any of this as a personal attack on you or your tank. It is not. Just trying to clarify misconceptions some people have on what sand beds do. Layton

You would be all for them too, if you could sell books on them (notice the large advertisement on the top of that linked page), and charge people $175 USD to find out how to run one. He was the one who said that running one is as easy as falling off a log, but now it appears that it's not quite as simple as he use to think. Even the university where he was an Affiliate Associate Professor for a while disagrees with him: http://www.montana.edu/ecology/courses/ ... phorus.doc The evidence is overwhelmingly conclusive on how sand beds work. And it is VERY different from that which Dr Ron portrays. I don't care whether you use one or not. But you should probably know what they are REALLY doing. Layton

I'm not putting DSB's down. Just showing how they work and what they do. Some animals couldn't care less about them cycling nutrients, but for others it can kill them. :roll: Where's YOUR homework? Here's mine: Effect of emersion and immersion on the porewater nutrient dynamics of an intertidal sandflat in Tokyo Bay, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, Volume 57, Issues 5-6, August 2003, Pages 929-940 Tomohiro Kuwae, Eiji Kibe and Yoshiyuki Nakamura Sediment oxygen consumption and vertical flux of organic matter in the Seto Inland Sea, Japan, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, Volume 56, Issue 2, February 2003, Pages 213-220 Y. Nakamura Assay of phosphatase activity and ATP biomass in tideland sediments and classification of the intertidal area using chemical values, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Volume 47, Issues 1-6, January-June 2003, Pages 5-9 Ken-ichi Nakamura and Chieko Takaya Degree of pollution for marine sediments, Engineering Geology, Volume 53, Issue 2, June 1999, Pages 131-137 M. Fukue, T. Nakamura, Y. Kato and S. Yamasaki Water Research Volume 36, Issue 4 , February 2002, Pages 1007-1017 Phosphorus Budget as a water quality management tool for Closed aquatic mesocosms Advances in Environmental Research Volume 6, Issue 2 , March 2002, Pages 135-142 Field measurements of SOD and sediment nutrient fluxes in a land-locked embayment in Hong Kong K. W. Chaum Water Science & Technology Vol 42 No 3-4 pp 265–272 © IWA Publishing 2000 Non-steady variations of SOD and phosphate release rate due to changes in the quality of the overlying water T Inoue, Y Nakamura and Y Adachi Water Science and Technology Vol 30 No 10 pp 263–272 © IWA Publishing 1994 Effect of flow velocity on phosphate release from sediment Yoshiyuki Nakamura Effects of Benthic Flux on Short Term Variations of Nutrients in Aburatsubo Bay KAZUFUMI TAKAYANAGI and HISASHI YAMADA Marine Pollution Bulletin Volume 20, Issue 12 , December 1989, Pages 624-628 Alteration of phosphorus dynamics during experimental eutrophication of enclosed marine ecosystems Kenneth R. Hinga Author/Editor/Inventor Hopkinson Charles S, Jr [a]; Giblin Anney E; Tucker Jane; Garritt Robert H. Institution [a] Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, 02543 USA. Title (English) Benthic metabolism and nutrient cycling along an estuarine salinity gradient. Smolders, A.J.P.; Lamers,L.P.M.; Moonen, M; Zwaga, K; Roelofs, J.G.M. 2001. Controlling phosphate release from phosphate-enriched sediments by adding various irons compounds. Biogeochemistry, 54(2): 219-228. Ye, Y; Tam, N.F.Y; Wong, Y. S. 2001. Livestock Wastewater Treatment by a Mangrove Pot-cultivation System and the Effect of Salinity on the Nutrient Removal Efficiency. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 42(6): 512-520. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/sferpm/szm ... Final.html http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/sferpm/szm ... rlson.html http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/Bot482/Kan ... 20Biol.pdf http://www.agralin.nl/wda/abstracts/ab1555.html http://www.fknms.nos.noaa.gov/research_ ... _paper.pdf http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:N9V ... n&ie=UTF-8 http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extens ... /phos.html http://enterprise.canberra.edu.au/WWW/W ... enDocument http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/~edecarlo/spatntemp.pdf http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/corp_site/info ... rients.pdf http://www.montana.edu/ecology/courses/ ... phorus.doc http://www.ozestuaries.org/indicators/I ... nts_f.html http://www.ebc.uu.se/norr.malma/researc ... phorus.pdf Even A Book: http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpa ... ww.wkap.nl Like shooting fish in a barrel (so to speak). Layton

Found this site, full of useful information: http://www.ozestuaries.org/indicators/I ... nts_f.html http://www.ozestuaries.org/indicators/I ... ion_f.html Effectively tells you the details of what's going on in sediments and sand beds. Very comprehensive with links to definitions and additional information. Layton

HDPE should be cheaper than cell cast perspex.

Mines just rock on glass. There's potential for danger from rock slides, depending on how you aquascape. You probably won't find plastic labelled as starboard or cutting board, the stuff you're after is High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) plastic. Also be aware when you are cutting it out for the base of the tank, it absorbs a reasonable amount of water and expands, so cut it a bit smaller than the tank. Layton

Of which Eric is guilty of in this case, not doing his research. Also the tanks of Eric's which I have seen, I wouldn't call highly successful. Of course that doesn't mean he doesn't know his stuff, I respect what he has to say on most topics, just not this one. Layton

Cool, hope the skimmer can keep up.

It's anything but "harmless". Look up the definition of oxic. What you've said doesn't make sense. Also those bubbles aren't air. It feeds a lot of stuff, not just corals. I would have though the more often the better. After all the cleaner the bed, the fewer problems it will cause? This is the reason I posted info on sand beds. It's not to abuse people who use them, it's so people know how they actually work, and what they are actually doing. Because there is a lot of absolute rubbish spouted by "experts" in the hobby circles. You just have to look at the evidence in nature, as well as the hundreds and hundreds of scientist which have studied these environments, who all come to the same conclusion on what they do. Layton

Stirring a sand bed is bad though isn't it? It disturbs the oxygen gradients (which is what causes them to leak eventually), which would stop any denitrification which may be going on, turning the bed oxic. There have been numerous people who have tried to make sand beds stop what they do (cycling nutrients) with all sorts of methods, some successfull, others not even close. Layton

They all have a few things in common.

It won't last forever, sooner or later problems will occur, just like in all those public aquariums which failed. Sure it's good when it's in a absorption mode, but when it kicks into leak mode, the problems start, slowly but surely. Layton

It's an reasonable nice looking tank. (just needs a bit of black tape across the bottom to hide that ugly sand bed profile ) They still work the same way as they always have though, cycling nutrients.

Algae has it's own problems independent of substrate: http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewto ... 703#108703

Just a side shoot from the vodka thread. Didn't want to clog that up. The reason why i wouldn't consider using an algae filter to achieve low nutrients is this: Algae (macro and micro) has specific requirements, they are limited in the forms of nutrients they can use. Also the ratio (Redfield ratio) of these nutrients plays a role in how well they will grow. So the idea is to attach a tank with algae in line with a display tank. Presumably you want the display to be low nutrient. However on the other hand you have this algae filter which requires high nutrient conditions in order to be effective, otherwise the algae dies. So if the algae requires high nutrients to operate, how is it going to reduce the nutrients in the display to the levels you want? But then the algae itself becomes a source of waste in the tank, through toxins which they secrete in order to gain area for growth. Many people have tried to make these systems work. Even the largest proponent, the guy who wrote all the books on the topic couldn't run low nutrient systems with this method. He has a string of large public aquarium failures after his name. Layton

You may need inline RJ45 to BT adaptors which incorporate terminating capacitor, for the phones. Layton

Actually, the "problem" is with the way they work. The way they work may be adequate for keeping some animals, just not the ones i like to keep. Knowing what I know now, I would never use algae to control nutrients in my tank. Layton

That is a good scheme, you get added calcium from the acetic acid /calcium hydroxide, with the benefit of adding acetate which is a food source which a wide variety of bacteria can utilise very effectively. Don't know whether I agree with the very last post though. I think you are more likely to be able to control and fix the source problem with vodka (or similar) because it can get the the bacteria in the tank which need it most. The ones which are in the rock migrating nutrients. Chemical removers don't have the same ability, the purely work at the dissolved compound level. Which generally only exist (for phosphate) when every other biological sink is full.

Yeah, i wasn't that impressed with Marine World. The couple of issues of Coral i got were very good. Layton

Do they all have a ring tone? If you've got a lot of phones connected directly to a single line, it could be drawing more current than allowed.

As predicted. Sold already, just over 15 hours since it was listed.

Soft corals love flow. Keep it pumping Fay.

Nope. Never seen or heard of a tort in NZ. I've been trying to find one. Apparently they are starting to aquaculture something similar to the Oregon tort in Bali now. Layton

Yip, and you'd see an increase in nitrogen fixing bacteria (cyano and the like), given sufficient phosphate. Mr Redfield again.

And what are these "hugely outnumbering nitrogen unfixing bacteria" using? Nitrogen of course. If nitrogen was limiting, then nitrogen fixing bacteria wouldn't be "hugely outnumbered" by nitrogen oxidising bacteria. Layton