someone please make sense of it for me!

[whusband]

good thread everybody

i was wondering about competing bacterial colonies when setting up my sump. i decided to have my DSB in the sump rather than in the sump AND in the main tank.

what do you guys think? do you agree with my assumption, or do you think it would be better to have 2 DSB's?

 

[danmhippo]

I have 3 DSB. Main tank, 1 refugium and 1 sump with refugium partition.

 

[Anonymous]

Being the "average joe" and not having the biology background (took pyshcology as my lab science in college

), I can only speak from first hand experience. When I had my bio balls in the trickle filter for about a year after the tank was established, my nitrates ran around 8ppm with light feeding. I read about refugiums and coverted my wet/dry into one about a year after that. The tank is now 3 years old, I feed heavily, have a higher bio load, and undetectable nitrates. All cicurmstanial, but it worked for me.

 

[dgasmd]

OH OH? what is that supposed to mean? It is simple science. Ask anyone that knows anything about microbiology.
I have heard just about anything in these forums. From "the dust will settle when it gets weighted down by bacteria to you have to buy some fish at a certain time of the year or they will die".
I guess we each get opinions and believe what sounds better to us, which may not reflect the truth.

 

[Anemone]

Like SKBok, I had a tank with bioballs (built-in wet/dry) that ran at about 20 ppm nitrates. I pulled the bioballs, made the area into a refugium with 4" sand bed, and added 2+ inches of fine sand to my 1 1/2" CC substrate in the main portion of the tank. Within three months, my nitrates were undetectable.

Not understanding why the bioballs with live rock was worse than live rock with a DSB, I asked Eric Borneman, a friend with whom I was doing the "message board monitor" thing on AOL. He gave me the basics of my explanation above.

Since then I have confimed and fleshed out the explanation in personal conversations with Dr. Ron Shimek and Dr. Jonathon Lowrie. They've got the degrees in Marine Biology, not I, so when they explain something that is within their area of expertise, I give it more weight than something "I just heard somewhere," especially when it matches my personal experience.

Kevin

 

[sparks]

I recently removed my balls (bio that is) but i still have no DSB, does anyone see a problem with that.
I will be putting in a DSB on day when i decide to re arrange the aquarium furiture (LR).
Its just a job i don't look forward to.
Also can i use beach sand for a DSB if so should i collect from "wet or dry" sands on the beach.
I have good access to "live mud" at our local mangrove river systems. I prefer beach sand as it is very white in colour.