DSB...lets talk about them

salt newbie01

salt newbie01

Reefing newb
So I have noticed a lot of you guys run dsb's. I would like to hear from you. When I first got into the hobby I read alot about dsb's. The one thing that turned me off was the long term breakdown of the dsb. What happens 5 years or even 10 years down the road? What do you do to maintain oxygenation? Maybe a bunch of large snails ie conchs? Do/can you siphen the sand bed when doing water changes to export some of the detritus? or would that hurt the dsb? I really am interested in learning more about them. Aside from reading articles I really want good info from those of you that are using them and have used them for an extended time period. So please lets talk about the art of keeping a dsb.

I will be setting up a 220 FOLWR tank in the next year or so. I am debating on the entire tank set up at this point and a dsb is one of my considerations. Since I will have agreesive fish and large fish I expect to have a high nutrient load to deal with. I wonder if a dsb in addition to a large kich butt skimmer will help manage a healthy stable tank?
 
Can we PLEASE keep this discussion relatively simple, please. THis should be an interesting topic and I dont want to have to get out the dictionary to understand it. Im not a simpleton and have a decent vocabulary but the ultra-technical jargon gets me every time. THank you in advance!
 
I know what you mean Ryan I am right there with you. I mean I got the loop, swoop and pull down and I can wipe my own ass but sometimes the chemistry terms get me a little confused!! I will go get my webster's just incase!! Seriously though, it seems like there are some people here who have some experiance with DSB's and I would like to learn.
 
I'm not sure Fatman maybe able to comply.

Somehow this thread is going to be another ''versus'' thread.Here's my experience and opinion on DSB in a nutshell.I tried the DSB and the plenum method throughout the 90's.I didn't get the miraculous denitrification I was looking for.Could I of done something wrong,probably.I did have sand stirrers like nassarius snails and cerith snails,no deep sand sifters like the serpent stars or gobies that could disturb the lower part of the sand.

For me,because of the potential of crashing which I didn't experience in those 6-7 years and how ugly a DSB really looks.I mean all the black gunk along the glass under the sand and let me not forget how much water all that sand displaces.To this day I still recommend a remote DSB in a refugium or separate tank,never the main display.I whole-heartedly recommend water changes and a refugium for nitrate reduction over a DSB anyday.
 
Thanks reeffreak. That's the kinda stuff I am talking about. I too do not like the look of the DSB. I didn't know if there was some way to hide that or not. I don't mind the look of the sand being up that high, it's all the gunk you can see.

thanks for your input
 
how would you go about doing a successful remote dsb in the refugium? I want to do a refugium with dsb and macro aglae but am not sure about how they react with each other.
 
You just have a deep sand bed in the refugium, that's all. Most people that have a refugium run a DSB in it. Macroalgae and DSB don't "react" with each other, per se, they complement each other, I think.

I have about 4 to 5 inches of sand in my main tank. It would be pushing it to call that a DSB. However, I have 6 to 8 inches in my fuge. I believe that the chances of a DSB crashing are much lower if the sand is slowly turned over, via nassarius snails or sand sifting gobies, animals like that.
 
There is at least one other presently running thread about deep sand beds on this forum site. Four inches of sugar fine sand is considered the low end of what is consider acceptable if you expect nitrification and supplemental help with trace element replacement and calcium supplementation from a deep sand bed. More is better, but five is good. It requires more with coarser substrates. The easy way to judge whether or not a deep sand bed is denitrifying is whether or not it is dissolving. The same conditions required to produce the lower pH which causes the aragonite to dissolve is also the condition that is required by the bacteria that denitrify. So conditions are best provided by deeper sand beds than the minimum in general, but a number has to be placed somewhere and that seems to be a adequate number for a minimum. A nitrifying bed can be had by much shallower depths than a denitrifying deep sand bed. The general rule is more than three inches or less than one inch. The majority of complications with nutrients storing up is with those thicknesses between one and three inches as neither the nitrifying or denitrifying bacteria seem to like the oxygen parameters at those thicknesses. Usually it is best not to manually stir a deep sand bed but to allow it to be stirred naturally by the critters that inhabit the sand bed. They actually drag the food they want and need down under the fine sand as little can make it through the small pore spaces on its own. Deep sand beds once they have developed are able to handle amounts of nutrient inputs that a full tank of live rock would hard pressed to begin to be able to handle. People like Riddle, Joshi, Calfro and the like have performed examples where they have ground up a whole pound of shrimp into a fine slurry and dumped it in to a tank, and waited weeks while testing daily and no nitrates ever appeared. That is a good biological system and live rock can not begin to match that. A wood 1" x 4" hides a deep sand beds lower levels if you do not like their appearance. The space made available by all the live rock you do not need once the deep sand bed starts developing more than makes up for the space taken up by the sand bed. Once the deep sand bed is developed all the live rock you will need will be to affix corals to and for aesthetics, if you like their appearance more than coral. Of course if you keep principally fish you will want them to have the swimming room removal of unnecessary rock will provide anyway , even without corals.
And no big scientific words either.
 
Thanks biff and fatman. My plan is actually to make an 75 gal sump with a 40 gal refugium in it. I want there to a 6-8 in bed, 60% sugar sand, 40% aragolive reef sand. I don't know what I'm gonna do about stirrers because I worried about them accidentally uprooting the algae causing me to disturb the bed trying to set it back. Another question. what stirrers just eat the detrius and not the bugs in the sandbed since the bugs do most of the stirring.
 
What kind of algae are you planning on using, Randy? The best, and easiest kind to find, for a fuge is chaetomorpha (chaeto). This macroalgae does not root, it just forms in a clump. Nassarius snails are the best animals to keep your sandbed stirred.
 
I currently run a DSB in the tank and the refugium. I don't have a problem with the way it looks. I kinda like the natural look of it.

Manually stirring the DSB is IMHO the worse thing you can do to it. Don't EVER put a gravel vac into a DSB and vac it. EVER!!!

The DSB works because there are bacteria that live in the lower regions where there is NO oxygen or very little of it. These bacteria will process the nitrates. The end result is harmless nitrogen gas that bubbles out with powerheads or surface agitation. Stirring the DSB brings those bacteria up to the surface where they are exposed to oxygen and then promptly die. Dead bacteria in the tank COULD = nitrate spike.

Also, stirring the DSB causes surface bacteria up on top to be forced down to the bottom where there is no oxygen. They can't live without oxygen, so they die too. DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION nitrate spike Batman!!

The top bacteria need to live on the top and the bottom bacteria need to live on the bottom. They are NOT adaptable.

Having snails and a goby keeps my DSB turned up. But the thing to remember is that it happens SLOOOOOOOOOWLY. If the goby digs a hole all the way to the bottom of the tank--YES, bacteria will get moved around and some of them will die. But it's never very many of them. The rest of the system will take up the die off and you shouldn't see any nitrate spikes. They will repopulate when the sand is left undisturbed. After goby gets done digging, they will grow back.

I think it would be possible to slowly change out the sand in your tank. You could change out 20% of the DSB once per year, or every 2 yrs. Whatever. Next time, move over and change out the next 25% section of the DSB. Next time, move over and change out the next 25%. In 4 cycles, you will have completely replaced the DSB.

Another thing to check into is CPW. Controlled Plenum Wasting. BIG thread on RC about it. It gets hostile and ugly for a bit, but GOOD info in there. I don't have the guts to try it. I think it would work though.
 
I was planning on using chaeto, caulerpa, [SIZE=-1]gracillara, and sea lettuce. Wanted to try everything to see what does best, but overall I wanted something pods can feed on along with something I could feed the display tank. http://www.aquacon.com/vip.html
This is the site I get most of my info from. Also, how far do the nassarius snails burrow down?
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Nassarius only burrow and sift the sand near the very top 1/2'' or so.They only go deep enough to keep there snout sticking out of the sand.From my understanding,slow sifting on the top allows the gas to release slowly and in small amounts avoiding the crashing.In a mature system,mini-brittlestars,worms and pods will populate the sandbed feeding on detritus,bacteria,microalgae(film algae,diatoms)......as well stirring the bed slowly.
 
Randy, macroalgae won't feed pods or the tank. The main purpose of macroalgae is for nutrient export -- it takes up nitrates and phosphates from the water which would otherwise be used to fuel nuisance algae in the display tank. It provides pods with habitat to breed in and live in, but pods don't eat macroalgae.

Also, I would avoid ordering anything from the website you linked to, in this hobby it is known as AquaCON because so many people have received dead/broken/wrong items and their customer service refuses to replace or repair them. I have only heard bad things about that company.
 
Ok..site is a bad source of info. Thanks for the warning. Sorta the reason I posted. Wanted to see if it was good or not. I know its used for export but I was looking for a few things that I could also take from the refugium and use for food in the display. How would I make the area a great place for worms and pods. I want as many things moving the sand bed as possible.
 
Thanks!! I've read a lot and was under the impression that the only way to get the full range of micro critters was going to the ocean and getting a few pounds of live sand to add to your dsb. Stinking internet is full false info. My only option was to get live sand from the tampa bay live rock place.
 
You can get good quality live sand from anyone with an established tank. The more diversity, the better. Many LFS will be willing to hand over a cup of sand from one of their established display tanks, and lots of local reef club members would be willing to do the same from their tanks at home.
 

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