# Deep Sand Bed Experiences



## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

looking for peoples experiences concerning the Deep Sand Bed.

problems i've heard presented are nutrient buildup and fears of Hydrogen Sulfide.
i'm aware of those concerns.

internet and forum searches for info and possible problems have reached a dead end culminating in the above mentioned concerns about why they are not a good thing to use in an aquarium (any aquarium - freshwater and saltwater)

waiting for the new year when finances are again available (welcome to Christmas expenses)

asking ahead of time so i can get an idea what problems to expect and what can be done to resolve those issues.

curiosities i've got
-sand grain size ?
-sand depth ?
-how long it's been running (how long before it failed) ?
-any spikes in ammonia/nitrate/nitrite ?
-(for those that failed) guesses, observations, symptoms, smells going on when it failed, even those that don't seem relevant ?
-any critters in the substrate (if present/used) ?

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everything i've encountered about why a deep sand bed should not be done are given the same argument: concerns about Hydrogen Sulfide.

i'm aware of how toxic this gas is in the aquarium. it's one concern. a concern that, as much as i can find, can be neutralized. a concern that has been brought up by people who do not talk about what they were using in their substrate (above questions)


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## Pamela (Apr 21, 2010)

Edit: This thread was posted in the Freshwater section as well, so I deleted that one as we don't allow for duplicate threads. If the original poster would prefer this to be moved into the Freshwater section, please let me know & I will do it.


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## dino (Aug 29, 2011)

are we talking freshwater? im assuming not so there is alot of threads regarding this issue already on the forum and much debate so if you want you can also do a search and check it out for yourself. i myself have about 2 1/2 in my fresh and less in my salt.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

i inquired in both freshwater & saltwater to keep things open to people with an interest in one or the other.

for research on deep sand beds, ... i've about exhausted the internet on available resources i can find about how they're set up, what goes into them, and come across the proposed concerns.

to a certain extent now it's promises vs. opinions that i'm finding

so i'm trying to find out everything i can from anyone who's got any direct experience with them, what worked, what didn't, what they did, any findings about what was going on/wrong when/if their DSB failed. (seems something no one does, any testing about why any DSBs are failing)

currently i'm finding a lack of results about any specifics about what did or didn't go into anyone's deep sand bed, ... what was working or was not working, ... or any idea of what caused what. (both fans and nay-sayers)

the worst explanation is "it crashed". apparently a good explanation :/


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

dino, yes there is much debate, i was part of the most recent one, ...

no one is reporting their experiences though, not just here, but anywhere

well found 2, one freshwater who ran a successful thread on another forum for several months, and one person who posted their personal findings with their own sandbed infrequently for the first 2 years of it's life then no updates since.

it's easy to debate something (both for and against) when people are lacking the details behind what is going on, ... the personal experience.

i'm not going to knock either the successes or the failures, just try to find more details to see what is actually going on.

from the people who first started the idea, it's a great theory, a great promise, and it's one persons experience.
years and years later hundreds have tried it, some have succeeded, many have failed, ... what separates the successes from the failures.

like most things, lab tests, initial testing and results by the founder, ... includes 2 things, a strong desire for success, and bias.

hundreds of people later have tried it, ... what happened, ?, what went wrong in those that didn't work ???
honestly, that's a good question


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## dino (Aug 29, 2011)

Ive also found articles on canreef you could checm out


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## DBam (Aug 9, 2010)

I've gathered from your general forum activity that you're really passionate about utilizing a DSB, particularly in a freshwater setup. Besides a successful DSB, what are you trying to keep and maintain? Since this is a fish forum; what fish are you wanting to keep? I kinda doubt you're wanting a tank full of only sand and pond water.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

honestly, i'm not passionate about the deep sand bed, i'm passionate about the promise, something that can reduce nitrates from a tank without requiring a water change in a healthy manner.

many would tend to think my persistence to be stubborn when what i was asking for, 'an explanation about why' was avoided by everyone involved.

what am i planning to have, ... a self-sustaining tank.

the DSB has inspired many thoughts and considerations, and prompted many additional searches from this, ... first is sand grain size to find the balance between bacterial population to reduce ammonia & nitrites, and farther down to nitrates, and porewater (if i remember the term properly) for diffusion to find the right grain size to support the highest bioload (and still retain zero's for ammonia & nitrites)

i've got ideas to solve the problems associated with a DSB, but they don't seem to need a deep sand bed to remove nitrates from the system.

as for what kind of fish, ... nothing in particular yet.
i've kinda put identifying what fish i want in the bed on hold till i find a decent way to solve the waste issues from the critters.

as mentioned, got ideas for nitrates, phosphates though seem to be eluding everyone, ... i guess mostly because i'm looking at a reef forum that doesn't deal with plants, vascular plants in particular, ... which seem to be a DSB's downfall (to omit every detail that led up to that.)

the saltwater DSB with it's aragonite (calcium carbonate substrate) ... i don't want to say they've got chemical flaws, but require some creative thinking to find answers the marine community doesn't have it seems. ... i'm reading up on that now though. maybe someone has proposed the ideas and they've been found to be inefective. 69 pages on the one thread, i'm at page 4, ... lots of reading, followed by a 49 page thread if i still need more answers.

so it's not fair to say i'm passionate about a deep sand bed, i just want more answers than it appears people have, ... especially when answers are "they fail", "tanks crash", "it's nutrients", ... that doesn't say what's going on though.

i just want something that allows a complete system to recycle the tank for a potential self-sustaining aquarium, try to see how it could be as universal as possible, ... if it's feasable see others go wild about it and see if it withstands the test of other people taking up the experiment too.

like the DSB idea, a good idea, but it isn't withstanding being tested on any long-term ability. except for a few rare situations leaving the odds to random chance over understanding what those tanks had that others did not.

after i find enough answers on dealing with fish wastes, begins the search for food stuffs for the tank.

initial inquiries met greater resistance to the DSB idea. but at the time i also had less understanding to go on. although i did learn something important, ... inside the hobby the only support you'll have is to continue doing the same thing as everyone else is doing to get the same expected results.

to be able to find information to support or disprove any inquiries has to be done with sources outside of the hobby, where there's access to journals, real world research studies, academic and scholarly understanding that is based on people pushing the boundaries of common understanding and hearsay to see how things work, how far something can be pushed and what's going on to understand what it's capable of in great detail.

i'm not content to sit back and just accept "this is good enough" because it's not, and that applies to everything, not just aquariums, but to science, education, politics, society, i see us living in a very barbaric archaic age, sure we've come a long way from weilding swords, but replace one weapon with another, it's still a weapon. put a king in charge, but a self-serving burocratic organization in charge, it's still limiting to growth and freedoms, always with the same reasoning, even in the aquatic community, ... "don't do that because we can imagine thousands of ways of why it would fail, and sensationalize every worry and concern that has never become a reality."

so DSB's fail and are a bad practice, ... sadly on a half-dozen different forums no one could say why.
that's a clear lack of understanding about what's going on.
a clear lack of understanding about why things turned out the way they did.
a clear lack of understanding about what to do about it.
a lack of thinking to identify that there could be anything done about it.

so a self-sustaining tank is my idea
dono if you've heard of those eco-spheres. a completely sealed saltwater environment with brine shrimp & coral. and who knows what else. no one can get in, nothing gets out, no feeding, no vaccuming the substrate. every word ever mentioned inside the hobby says everything about it is impossible, ... they're reporting some have survived for 10 years, still living. life of brine shrimp i think is 3 years. ... in my eyes, that's a lot of people that don't know anything speaking their lack of knowledge like it's gospel.

a great source of people for experience, but not the greatest people to talk with about understanding what's going on.
always meet those people who push the boundaries, both in what they've tried, and the few that spend the time and research to push their aquariums beyond what the rest of the hobby considers possible.

ever ask "why is an undergravel filter bad?", i searched couldn't find any answers other than it's no longer fashionable.


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## DBam (Aug 9, 2010)

If your overall goal is a self-sustaining system, maybe I can put some of your challenges into perspective for you. I'm a freshwater-only guy, so nothing I refer to is based on marine systems unless otherwise noted. Basically everything that goes into your tank is accounted for; food, fish, plants, anything organic. Law of conservation of mass (if you don't understand this part, though I assume you do, you absolutely must read this thoroughly and understand it. You'd be surprised how many people don't remember this simple grade school lesson). If you intend to continue feeding a population of animals or plants indefinitely, eventually you will have to remove end/by products. Running a healthy planted tank requires pruning, cutting and dividing or the tank will be congested with leaves and stems. 

Nutrient recycling works in lakes and reefs because of the scale it is taking place over. Go out to a local lake, and tell me how many lbs of fish inhabit it, and the volume of water and surface area of the water surface and lake bed, and volume of streams feeding and draining the lake (don't actually do this, but at least picture it). Nutrient cycling can be in dynamic equilibrium because of the size of the system. Consider your tank. How much less volume and surface area is this compared to the lake? How many orders of magnitude difference? How much more is the animal mass to water volume ratio of your average tank compared to the local lake? That's the whole reason we do water changes. 

If you intend to replicate the heterogeneity of an intact natural freshwater system, you're gonna have to abide by the realistic rules of nature. Take a 75 gallon tank and fill the bottom with heavy silt, maybe add a stem of milfoil, and 1 stickleback. If you stir the silt, be sure to use a jig to only reach a certain depth, no deeper, to simulate water movement, storms, slow currents, or whatever might shift the sand in a lake. See how long that stickleback survives. It might make it a while with no waterchanges and only small feedings. If this kind of idea floats your boat, go for it. The catch is, you can't start bending the rules to allow for more fish, plants, or higher productivity. Even then, all systems move towards states of higher entropy, and your milfoil stem and minnow will reflect this at some point. More than likely, toxic conditions will be reached before long, by one way or another. Even with the goal of maintaining a self-sustained system, your wastes will spike ahead of your natural control methods capability to deal with them, like a predator/prey graph. That is the same reasons we get algae blooms in our tanks, as well as local lakes each spring.

Under gravel filters (UGF's) are not unfashionable, they've just led to common cases of tank crashes. You can't blame it on any single cause, it could've been due to massive waste accumulation, harboring parasites, anaerobic wastes, or the hobbyists own negligent practices. It's definitely the cause behind the fishes death, whether directly or by weakening the immune system. I've worked in LFS's to know that the best thing to do when it happens is rip out the UGF, bleach the tank, rinse, and start over. One final point; I haven't read anything about brine shrimp living in closed bubbles for 10 years, and you might want to confirm the accuracy of those cases, and all the details. Anyone can go on the internet and say anything. If they have a study and a (preferably scholarly, peer-reviewed) paper to back it up, even better.

I've never written this long a forum post before, and I hope I won't have to again. You seem starved for information, and I've given you the best I have. I've left out the citations, but there's university textbooks that will back up my points. You're battling 2 encompassing concepts: entropy, and irreplaceable natural heterogeneity.


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

is this just for marine?
from what I understand, freshwater fish release pheromones into the water and detect their concentration to determine how big/fast to grow... so even if something was removing the nitrates you would likely still want to do water changes while the fish are growing


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

detrivores can break things down to restart the process so the tank doesn't fill with debris.

i don't think that a self-sustaining tank can be done by mimicking any biotope or nature. it's going to have quite the artificial initialization, ... sifted sand, specifically selected plants, fish & other critters with a specific dietary preference. the right kind of cleaning critters. ... i'm sure it would be full of critters and plants that never knew each other in the real world.

the brine shrimp eco-sphere
Ecosphere Associates, Inc.: Closed Ecosystem, Self Contained Aquarium
while it's them marketing their own products saying some have been known to last 10 years. even marketing has to be careful about what they say or they face charges of false advertising.

so far, things i know i'm up against, the nitrogen cycle. either i'm going to loose nitrogen gas, and the tank is going to unbalance, or it's going to fill with nitrates, and again it's unbalanced 
phosphates, which result in a rather insoluble form that cause other tank chemistry to unfold and things once again fall apart.
ensuring a proper food chain where one doesn't eat the other into extinction, including plants, to only grow as fast as they're consumed, not faster or slower.

you do raise an important part about silt, ... over time that is going to build up to a significant amount. and if it's not moved to lower levels of the substrate will build up to a fine layer ontop and smothering the substrate will result, and throw out the tank chemistry again

all this speaks nothing of parasites and diseases 

freshwater breeding cycles and causes also need to be taken into consideration. else the fish will always strive to be in a reproductive state, or never reach a reproductive state. and the system unfolds. those at the top die of old age, and their food over populates the tank. or they reproduce out of control and over populate the tank.

as for me refering to marine sources, ... to consider a self-sustaining idea in a marine environment as they don't have plants like freshwater does, i consider the marine environment to be more of a 'stress-test' type of environment. maybe freshwater has those concerns solved by the very nature of plants, maybe not. ... even if freshwater does, it's not good to take it for granted then left fumbling for answers when something goes wrong.

as for the food chain, ... considering it in a pyramid, i think it turns into a very shallow pyramid to allow the top enough to eat. one person i talked with on another forum mentioned a 2" (i think it was) fish (carnivorous tendancies) stripped a tank of it's daphnia in 3 mo. then she had to resort to regular feedings. ... 30 gallon tank

so much for for considering a breeding pair 

i have considered to limit fish and critters to herbivore tendancies, limit plants to shorter plants. trying to find any reference to any freshwater plankton that is not free swimming to assist in detritus breakdown while being of a size they won't all be picked off for lunch, ... that's hampered when "plankton" is taken to be marine and freshwater i have to search each genus 

water changes are one thing to consider, or to consider what can be done to avoid them.
self-sustaining is also food supply

most consider "self-sustaining" to be "can't be done you've gotta top up water, therefore it's not self-sustaining", if i was trying to make it a sealed self-sustaining tank. that would be a recipe for disaster if i couldn't interact when something went wrong to see what can be done to correct it. i'd have a bunch of sealed tanks full of dead fish till they popped under their own pressure due to rot and fermentation.

if the end result is "it's not possible" i want a log of every problem i've come across and what the cause of breakdown in the system was that could not be rectified.
maybe by the end of it i'll only have a new model to solve a current problem in aquariums. maybe it will never provide anything of the sort. but i'll still have that log of problems to share to explain why in the same amount of detail i'm asking in every question i pose with all possibilities explored and backed up with literary references.

but yes, what goes into a tank, ... will accumulate, the only solution to that delema is eliminate additional input into a tank.


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## DBam (Aug 9, 2010)

Eliminate and also remove. What goes in must come out, at least at a threshold level. If you have a sealed system, how are you going to moderate all the variables that will swing on their own? My suggestion is to pursue "low-maintenance" as a goal, and allow yourself to tweak variables as needed or desired. You may not escape waterchanges, but I think you'll have a lot more fun that way.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

water changes i think i can escape.
vacuuming is a possibility.
feeding, not likely.

regardless, in the end, ... yup, i'm sure i'll have a low maintenance tank  ... not quite a no-maintenance tank though.


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## albert_dao (May 28, 2012)

:/

Sounds like the entire goal of this is to facilitate bad habits.

Here's a meta problem for you:

Consider the mantra of professional athletes, businessmen, stock trader, pickup artists, etc. Always do your best and work hard. Nothing is casual. Why? Because casual mentalities fundamentally justify and reinforce bad habits which will start to affect your overall performance.

In the context that we're dealing with here, being a lazy reefer will make you TERRIBLE at problem solving when things do go downhill.

"_I haven't done a water change or any testing and dosing in x weeks. Now my corals look pale. WHY?_"

This question can probably be answered. But it will take a lot more than the 30 seconds I would spend going down my checklist since I already know all of the other things I did right.

Edit: You can't escape water changes. This is a 100% sorta thing. I have nearly zero detritus, undetectable organics and perfect water parameters. Despite this, if I skip a month without doing a water change, my livestock visibly suffers.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

finding in my freshwater tank (only tank) that is getting way more light than suggested, algae is taking over half the tank, except where plants are literally bunched together in a floating mass.

for saltwater, i'm finding where people can slack in a planted tank and the tank won't notice could kill a saltwater tank

ideas on a self-sustaining freshwater tank are coming from the saltwater community at how much work they have to do to keep there tanks healthy, how far they've gone to consider alternatives, exploring what the shortcomings of those alternatives are.

phosphates, something so simple (not really) are difficult to test for, for the few types of phosphate that are tested for are not the types that crash a tank.

PH in the sand bed is almost an independent entity from the water column, as areas in the sand bed fluctuate independently of other areas, as the PH drops the phosphates that are bound to calcium are suddenly released to diffuse into the water column. not a big problem if there is sufficient algae. possibly a problem if just vascular plants. in reefs, time for new coral, ... that was an expensive ph swing in an area that couldn't be tested or adjusted.

have to look into if anything can be done to bring in bacteria that are part of the anommox process to reduce nitrates and ammonium, completing the nitrate cycle without an anaerobic area in the tank, eliminating every need or use a DSB has.

i'm getting hints at phosphate reducing bacteria, but hints don't mean anything other than another self-made homework project, as the consensus otherwise is "no such thing"

live rocks ability to reduce nitrates, something freshwater does not have, but does not deal with ammonium, and a ph shift will suddenly give an ammonia spike (water column ph)

what i understand at the moment, water changes deal with nitrates accumulating, vacuuming removes phosphates and detritus from the substrate
for saltwater, skimmers remove things suspended in the water column (i haven't looked into these much)
water flow, in particular "strategic water flow" keeps particulates out of the substrate.

albert, i'm not doing this to go lazy, although guaranteed that will be the result, i'll know what i can get away with. both in what the tank is capable of handling, what has to be done to keep things running optimally. and if there is anything that is being done because of a shortcut that is a traditional part of the hobby, i'll find it.

i'm finding a lot of info in the hobby is passed around more than understood.
sometimes word-of-mouth is enough to save others heart-ache

i'm finding more though what is shared is viewed as dogma and doctrine with more excuses about why it should be maintained.

if it's hormones as the final answer about why tanks should be changed. because when the concentration rises it tells the fish it's reached the limits of the tank. ... water changes would skew this, more fish of the same time would skew this.

some of the answers i listen to. but those answers need information and insight to support them
other times the answers given provide me a direction of things to consider for the next self-made homework project.
a lot of the time the answers given are shown to be more myth when a 5 min. google search shows multiple articles by independent researches and literature to say it's clearly wrong.

because the times i blindly listen to the answers given with incorrect and/or incomplete reasoning behind them cause more missinformation and conflict.

eliminating water changes in a freshwater tank can be done in 2, possibly 3 different kinds of setups without need for a second tank no matter what that second tanks use is.

so far eliminating water changes in a saltwater tank, ... as albert is adamant about, a recipe for disaster. for nitrates, phosphates, i haven't come across anything that lets a reef-tank avoid water changes.

one person has some plenum type system hooked up to an automated timer that pumps a small amount of water from under the substrate out of the tank. (want to look into that more some time), is about as close as i've heard. but water out means water in means water change, ... he's just found a way to avoid vacuuming the substrate, ... for an unknown amount of time.

one of the problems with the DSB was the aerobic substrate slowly filled the whole sand-bed removing the anoxic layer, and the whole promise of the DSB became unravelled.
i've still gotta go through that thread on the other forum to see if the inquiry into solving DSB problems stayed on focus or was sidetracked or resulted in definitive resolution, ... 60+ pages currently , lots of reading.

bits i've come across so far about issues with a DSB (what i've understood of it.) involve ammonium having an ion charge that sucks it to the substrate, nitrates having an opposite charge that move it into the water column instead of preferring to migrate to lower aerobic environments to complete the nitrate cycle. and also have a bed full of ammonium the bed can't process unless it's got a specific type of bacteria in it.

i was expecting a lot less strait chemistry, a lot more bio-chemistry.
answers i've come across are trying to move bio-chemical processes into chemistry explanations. which can create some amazingly strait lines. unfortunately bio-chemistry and bacteria tend to start at ammonia to nitrite, then ... well, sometimes it goes to nitrate, sometimes back to ammonia, sometimes to ... and depending on what bacteria find their particular molecule they like for their source of energy, will determine what the by-product is. ... maybe it will become N2, maybe ammonium, maybe ammonia, maybe nitrite, maybe nitrate. ... and from that we're supposed to have a completed nitrogen cycle from our DSB.

i think there's a few processes that were not explained, i think there are several cycles that were ignored that are important as well.

most of the problems faced are at times simplified to, ... "in the hobby we do not have test kits to test for the presence of X" so we don't know X is an issue.

albert, if you made it this far.

you may have your checklist you can skim through in 30 seconds.
i'll know what i'm up against before it starts, know what to look for and what can be done about it already incorperated into the system. ... and most importantly "why"

there's a self-sustaining tank.

pick a tank, they start simple, they've got separate devices and/or additional tanks to deal with one problem or another (or several issues at once), those that cannot be corrected with these additions to the tank require regular routines.

all it takes is someone walking into a store, with a pocket full of cash and they walk about with what they need, a bunch of equipment, and test kits to identify problems before the problems become serious. and another pocket full of cash to rectify those problems.

maybe i'll still need all the equipment, maybe not, maybe i'll be able to avoid what is considered essential equipment and maintenance because of something i've done differently, ... maybe not, ... but i'll know why i have what i have including each species in the tank.

the world-class athlete may be a well honed tool made through years of dedication and practice. they also know all the science it took to get them to that level.
something that they don't tell you in the sports store that sells their exercise equipment.

so is the shortcut buying something your told you need and your able to see results?
or is the shortcut finding something that exceeds the expectations of common practices with typical results ?


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## albert_dao (May 28, 2012)

....

Dude... Saltwater tanks are easy...


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

planted freshwater is far easier, more forgiving as well


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## albert_dao (May 28, 2012)

*blink blink*


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## neven (May 15, 2010)

Maintenance wise, i find saltwater much less intensive than my fresh water planted tanks. While it may be true that the stock can take some tank negligence provided you dont overfeed or overstock, skipping out on maintenance or EI dosing can be a headache with overgrowth and algae. I co2 inject my tanks to take advantage of a lower light level, but at the same time, skipping EI dosings will throw the balance of nutrients out of whack leaving an opening for certain algaes to appear, further more the plants like a stable source of nutrients and as my largest planted tank is very water column feeding plant heavy, i see the effects with a week missed of dosages, even if i do fert tab the other stuff. Plus the filters can get filthy in freshwater, impeding flow and lessening water quality.

In salt, i change my water weekly, but i saw almost no effects missing a water change or two, i just do the W/C weekly so i dont need to dose additives. My only detritus on the sand is mostly from my clean up crew removing some fuzz from some of my LR that has fuzzies. i ensure i have good flow and the tanks maintain themselves for the most part, minus my wife cleaning the glass when she wants.

overall i find the only way my saltwater is more work is because its the tank im focusing on right now, always seem to be messing with something or adding something new. My other freshwater tanks all went through that stage aswell.

as with freshwater, the work is self created, its easy enough to make a tank with little to no work, but it takes a lot of work, and luck to make a tank no maintenance to a point i'd even call a no maintenance fish tank an oxymoron. Even taking a walstad set up in freshwater, you will find they have an end of life due to nutrient imbalance and organics build up.


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## whatcaneyedo (Oct 31, 2012)

All of that sounds like something I might compose while high. You're over thinking it, saltwater tanks are easy and sentences begin with a capital letter. You started this thread asking for people's experiences with deep sand beds. Well I tried a few for a couple of years before someone more experienced asked me 'why?'. Liverock provides the same function, skimming removes a great deal of waste before it breaks down into nitrate and I had plenty of both. He bet me that if I removed the DSB I'd free up a lot of space, eliminate the risk of an H2S crash and my water chemistry would go unchanged. So I did and you know what? He was right. But thats just my experience and the opinion that I have now as a result. If you want some industry accepted facts there are plenty of books available on the subject.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

things i've learned the last few weeks from reading.
the DSB is supposed to deal with the nitrogen cycle.
phosphate issues are not a problem related to the DSB, ... not directly.
a saltwater DSB (related to corals) ... each is going to argue with the other
a freshwater DSB ... can eliminate the DSB part by adding plants for the same results.

"nutrients" could be anything
detritus is detritus, phosphates are phosphates.

the biggest deterrent and promoter of DSBs are both sides of the argument because each side so over simplifies things they fail to explain anything till all that's left is "nutrients", "H2S"

HTS, sure it's real, ... is it a serious problem, ... only if you intentionally and deliberately rip out your substrate to expose it to the water column, ... but then your the genius so you get what you deserve.

do not rearrange your plants on a regular basis, ... well unless once again your the same genius i just talked about.

it's not that i'm just flat out disagreeing, those who say it's bad should at least spend the time to know what is going on. booze is bad, but to leave it at that and call people down who resort to it tends to suggest i'm an idiot with only an opinion and no education on the matter.

H2S, ... there's a fear tactic, ... unless you can show me a test kit for it, prove it's in your tank.
if it killed your fish because it was disturbed and released into the water column, why are you blaming the sand bed when you disturbed the H2S.

everything i've learned about what a DSB is up against came from people who went at length to go into detail about what they were up against and what, if anything, could be done about it. those with "experience" at them failing, present themselves as strictly opinionated with no knowledge to back up their statements, no understanding about what's going wrong, only arriving at an end conclusion, repeating that conclusion "the tank crashed", ... the first person who can tell me "the tank crashed" and explain what was going on, why it crashed, ... that person deserves a prize. if you can't explain anything, it might save yourself some time to do some homework and learn about what your talking about, if you can't do that, then keep your mouth shut.

hundreds of DSBs have failed, that's a better description then "crashed". "crashed" could mean your power went out and everything died. right next to "nutrients" because both of those explain nothing at all, ... am i repeating myself yes, ... 

no one talks about what happened in the DSB, no one talks about chemistry, PH, Ammonium, Nitrates, Ammonium & Nitrates, bacteria, Phosphates, how the substrate, any substrate becomes it's own living thing in a manner of speaking, areas of the sand bed take on their own environment, how that environment can fluctuate independantly of the water column and other areas in the sand bed.

no one talks about depth, no one talks about what it does over time, no one talks about water flow, pore-water, sand grain size, how the recommended livestock in the sand bed are seen literally as food for your fish. one talks about what these critters do, and that perhaps that would be a better approach to decide what you want in your sand bed instead of listing exact species.

the guy who started it, ... talks about it with the same viewpoint as every opinionated person who talks about why they're not good, ... without a single bit of research to back him up, just personal opinion.

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i've asked here, i've asked in other forums, literally a copy/paste of the question, ... what went into your sand bed, how was it made, how did it do, what went wrong (if it failed).

i've come to a fairly decided conclusion, ... asking people in the hobby about the hobby is about the worst thing anyone in the hobby or wanting to get into the hobby can do.

no one knows what is going on, they just get the equipment, several thousand dollars later they've been running their tank for years and are proud of it.
they get a skimmer and understand what it does because that's what it says on the box.
they get live rock (not knocking down live rock) and listen to their buddies about what to get, ... and get the same kind of live rock for the same reasons that were promoted to pick that kind of live rock because it is what was suggested to assist with a DSB., ... but now it's myth and forgotten so people buy fresh live rock with an assortment of critters that they don't know if they will or will not cause any problems in their tank.

or they get it cooked and have to wait for it to get started to build and populate it's denitrifying bacteria to do it's job and complete the nitrate cycle.

as phosphates fall out of suspension cover there live rock while their so concerned about detritus buildup on their sand bed. ... as bacteria break down the inorganic phosphates release these back into the water column and another algae bloom.

inorganic phosphates that have fallen out of suspension are about as innert as your going to get in your tank unless some plant is going to suck them up with it's roots. but those plants don't exist in saltwater tanks, well they do, but they're not vascular plants, ... well they are vascular plants but they're not good enough, ... well they may be good enough but that person just doesn't like their look.

so i get to explore the value and use of vascular plants in a saltwater environment one day because no one has done a serious look at identifying their use in an aquarium to co-exist with coral, ... but people have their opinions.

too bad no one considers what vascular roots do to an anaerobic substrate. because that will remove HS2 from the substrate as well. as it pumps oxygen into the substrate till the whole substrate is an aerobic environment

i watch my tank, as the plants have taken it over, algae is occupying where the plants are not.
i don't do anything people insist is needed for regular maintenance, i top up the water when it gets low, i skip out of any chemical filters, ... i must be doing everything wrong, ... but if so much is going wrong, and people want to insist "things will crash", ... remember that crash word ???, ... it's healthy. phosphor is low as the plants are showing signs they would want more. and i've got to filter through a thousand people to find the few that consider things from an objective view to search for what is going on.

sure everyone has their opinions about what's important, but no one seems to be looking at anything more than that. they just stick with their typical ways of doing things knowing the results to get from it because everyone else is doing the same things getting the same results.

so the people who talk about concerns they cannot verify
the people who talk about concerns they fail to understand how those become concerns.

of course i'm not going to listen to you.
i'm not content with arguing the status-quo as acceptable, because it's not.
those who would say "don't try those crazy experiments, don't try to improve them, don't try to make anything better", everyone who went against this is the reason of every advancement in everything in our world and in the hobby.

and every nay-sayer i've seen, heard, talked with has yet to mention anything with any understanding about why they're concerns are valid, only to accept them at their word.

one person from another forum i asked the same question on posted her story, ... what she described, because she didn't know what was going on, pointed out a phosphate issue, but the DSB is blamed, the fish all her sandbed critters, and everything went downhill.

that is the most i've heard anyone describe what happened to a DSB, and also described all she has was symptoms she didn't understand what they were from.

that's the extent of every claim against deep sand beds i've come across, a complete lack of understanding. where the test kits reach their limitations people take those test kits to be the extent of what's going on in the tank. ... unfortunately the test kits only tell us about half of the things that we use them for, and that leaves a whole other half that there are no test kits for, ... and from that we (the hobby) has convinced itself it's got the answers.

no one can test for inorganic phosphates that have fallen out of suspension, no one can test for ammonium, no one can test for H2S. and who knows what else there is that's going on that i haven't stumbled across that are valid concerns that we don't think of because we can't test for them.

so if i sound a little peturbed, chances are it's because i am.
i could count the number of people on one hand from all the forums i've come across with the sense to want to know what's going on and the mind to want to do something about it. those limited few are valuable to come across and listen to. they don't listen to the status quo and say "good enough, it worked for you, it should be good enough for me too"

so i search for the ever elusive currently impossible "self-sustaining tank"
i may never get a no-maintenance tank
i'm not going to reach a point even if i do and say "good enough", ... because what it takes to be self-sustaining is different from a healthy prosperous self-sustaining tank.

to find enough that it's not a specific mix of you have to have these exact parts, and nothing else will do. to find enough that can be done in fresh and salt, to maintain optimum water quality from a single tank without anything external.

you want impossible, that's it, .. but everything i've ever heard listed as "impossible" i've also seen history figure out how to do it.
just at the time no one knew how.

as for industry accepted facts about the DSB, ... your right they are industry accepted facts. they're simply accepted. no thinking involved.

show me the chemistry, bio-chemistry, processes, involved behind those industry accepted facts, ... please, any single one of those industry accepted facts is going to have an entire process and situation that makes them real. and like everyone else i could say "well i guess that's that", or i could sit back and ask "is there anything that could be done about it?"

but i can't ask those questions if no knows what processes are going on that make those industry accepted facts happen in the first place.

but i do hear lots of opinions with a clear lack of understanding.
as one person here tried stating that i was discrediting him, ... i can't discredit someone that has nothing to back up what they're saying, i can just call them on it.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

in the hobby i've met one person that considered things from a perspective of a closed cycle that feeds itself instead of requiring constant input to maintain itself.
everyone else i've come across is so focused on doing "what has always been done" they cannot deviate from constantly adding and taking away to maintain homeostasis.


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## AdamsB (Oct 18, 2011)

Are you currently running a DSB? Your clearly not getting the replies you want so maybe you just need to do it for yourself.


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## albert_dao (May 28, 2012)

LOL....

So anyway, India's in bad shape these days eh?


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

i hadn't started a DSB
i heard the promise, the promise was intriguing
the information about them was split, but no one had any answers
i found everything i could about them, the naysayers said they would fail but were clueless about why, just that they didn't work. ... naysayers like that show up in anything new, even the stuff that works

but still i wasn't getting any answers.

found a forum with people who actually explored what was going on, i got some answers
in line with other curiosities that were in conflict found the DSBs failure doesn't have anything to do with anything the naysayers were talking about.
i'm still looking into it, making sure my guesses are solid instead of premature.

and i've still gotta do a DSB test to just find out about substrate being used for the nitrogen cycle, at least it's nitrification part, the denitrification part is the only thing the DSB does

both in and out of a DSB, no one talks about how thick the hypoxic substrate can be before it develops an anoxic layer.
people only talk about size of sand grain from the perspective of capacity for beneficial aquarium bacteria, no one talks about it's porewater aspect, ... somewhere between the 2 is going to be the capacity for the highest bioload just for water flow through the substrate.

i'm guessing 4" sand substrates in 10 gallon tanks, different tanks holding different sizes of sand, ... so i don't know if 0.1mm will support the highest bioload, or if it's 0.3mm. i just get to count how many fish the tank is capable of holding before i get ammonia & nitrite readings above zero. i get to find out how deep a sand beds hypoxic layer is for that sand grain size.

there's simply not a lot of info inside the hobby at all about the hobby. most of it is all passed on word of mouth, and often it's based on what was done decades before.

so albert laugh, ... i'll ask you about things inside the hobby based on common knowledge for typical results, you've seen that.
for anything progressive though, you've also seen i've gotta find real answers.


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## albert_dao (May 28, 2012)

I have another strike against it for your consideration, a practical one:

If my power goes out for six hours, my tank is fine.

If the power goes out on a DSB system for half an hour, GG.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

and is that a failing of the DSB or of the power ?
or is that a failing of phosphate ?
or wait, that's not phosphate, that's the phosphate being released from it's bonds to re-enter the water column, ... the DSB isn't intended to deal with phosphates.

why don't we just blame the DSB on the end of the world, ... but wait that didn't happen. could blame it on war, and famine, on bullying, on guns killing people, ... could blame the DSB on a lot of things, why stop with the aquarium. blame the DSB on algae too, ... because that's only a problem with a DSB problem right ?

albert, talk about things you've done your research on, a DSB isn't one of them.
you know they fail, you've seen them fail, you blame them for all kinds of things that are not about what a DSB is about.
yet even as i've mentioned why they don't last you still don't want to see those as parts of a DSB.

blame it on nutrients, because those don't happen in anything else, ... then again my fish eat nutrients, so they can't be all bad.


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## albert_dao (May 28, 2012)

Eh? No dude, I just feel that if there's an easy way to do things (and when I say easy, I mean put the jam on the toast easy), I'm gonna do it. Especially if it's redundant, reliable and replicable. 

And there you go again, putting words in my mouth. I don't research. But I have a lot of experience. If I wanted to do research, I'd set up controls and blah, blah, blah, science lab, testing equipment, blah, blah, double blinds, blah. But I have no interest. I'm only interested in outstanding marine systems that everyone can take part in.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

albert, your right you don't research, which is why i don't listen to you about your opinions
and if your experience is nothing more than doing the same things the same way 100 times, ... then your not learning anything either.


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## The Guy (Nov 26, 2010)

So I think it's time for you to do your DSB, I know I for one am really tired of the continual lenghtly rederick about the subject of DSB use. I think whats important is if you think it's the way to go to maintain your tank then do it. Opinions and coments really do not matter, good luck.


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## DBam (Aug 9, 2010)

Thanks Laurie, I agree completely. Do what you want to do, Flear. Hopefully you enjoy doing it. We've pointed out a lot of flaws or areas of concern. Maybe if you overcome any of them, you can post it in a journal thread. Maybe our cautions will ring true, and you can come back and confirm our thoughts. For the record, I would never risk any of my stock on precarious ventures like yours; filtration systems come cheap and quick compared to what they sustain for me, and I'm all about what I keep, not the sand underneath them. Seriously, go do it, and truthfully catalogue your experiences. I'll take you more seriously once you arrive with some experience, humility, and sentence/paragraph structure.


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## Flear (Dec 8, 2012)

my grammer sucks, i know , one day


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