Detritus-free BB? No way?

[planetg]

Is it not possible to have a detritus-free bare bottom?

Spoken to a couple people and they all have a consensus that it's impossible to keep the bottom detritus free and I do tend to agree with some of the arguments.

However, I've seen quite a number of clean tanks from RC and RAG and I wonder if they are so free to siphon dirt out all the time!

I did plan for a closed loop at the bottom and an underflow. Hope it'll at least minimise the shit! haha.

Pls feel free to contribute to your personal experiences.

Cheers

[alanseah]

not true... I'm having detribus free bare bottom..

so long your turn over rate... is high and make sure no dead spot.. i see no result why anything which is so light like detribus be able to manage to stay untouch on the LR or bottom..

[planetg]

thanx alan.

could u share with us your setup details to ensure a detritus-free BB?

cheers

[IanJ]

I have problems with waste on a BB tank. Most people in USA are cooking their rocks. BB tanks need an increase in maintainance to syphon out build up on a very regular basis. Still trying to improve and increase flow to minimise the problem.

Difficult to find the time

[alanseah]

thanx alan.

could u share with us your setup details to ensure a detritus-free BB?

cheers

ok for pump in my 187gal setup...

return pump I'm using 1 x 12000L/h Red Dragon

1 x 6080 behind LR

1 x 6060 blowing across centre of the tank at the sps

1 x TS12 blowing at the front glass to create indirect flow and blowing at the front glass u can see your bottom dirt/sand flying up...

1 x Tunze Wavebox to prevent dead spot and it's runnin on max flow.

so return from main to sump is about 7000l/h after head loss

in tank circulation is 12000 + 8000 + 6000 + 12000 = 38000

38000 + 7000 (sump + main) = 45000 / 600(net water vol) = 75 times turn over rate...

[planetg]

wow alan,

any pic to share?

cheers

[alanseah]

wow alan,

any pic to share?

cheers

pic... lolz.. for a long long time I never take any pic of my tank.. too lazy for that..

plus showing too much stuff in here just asking for trouble...

I'm happy my BK 300 skimmer is doing a wonderful job for me... and I see gd future for my tank will do..

I'm too lazy to go and fight with ppls for color sps.. so look at my tank.. lolz all brown one.... left over by ppls who dont want.. and i pick up $20 each... and happy if they can color up... if not I will try my best to even keep the sps alive even they are brown and dull...or half death sps which I can get it slowly recover...

I'm not that crazy or rich to go for "get color sps and keep changing brown out sps for color sps" method and take part to be AOTM gang...

[surfedelic]

pic... lolz.. for a long long time I never take any pic of my tank.. too lazy for that..

plus showing too much stuff in here just asking for trouble...

I'm happy my BK 300 skimmer is doing a wonderful job for me... and I see gd future for my tank will do..

I'm too lazy to go and fight with ppls for color sps.. so look at my tank.. lolz all brown one.... left over by ppls who dont want.. and i pick up $20 each... and happy if they can color up... if not I will try my best to even keep the sps alive even they are brown and dull...or half death sps which I can get it slowly recover...

I'm not that crazy or rich to go for "get color sps and keep changing brown out sps for color sps" method and take part to be AOTM gang...

You have all the Dragons and you are keeping Brown frags No offence ... I believe you are too humble ..bro

[alanseah]

You have all the Dragons and you are keeping Brown frags No offence ... I believe you are too humble ..bro

lolz...well what's wrong with having brown sps...

they are color sps be4...

that's why i see no reason to spend so much on color sps which cost 60-80 which I can get a color and later brown out sps at 20..

anyway i prefer to see slowly color up sps then trying to only mentaining color sps...

or see sps grow from rock out of nowhere

anyway anyone also can be the TOTM if he willy to spend a few $k.. get all color sps and stock up.. and then take photo confirm everyone also say nice one..

[deityhack]

Good mentality, it is more fruitful to see brown sps colour up rather than getting a coloured sps which turn brown later. & it's cheaper that way.

Way to go, alan.

[RAV-65]

lolz...well what's wrong with having brown sps...

they are color sps be4...

that's why i see no reason to spend so much on color sps which cost 60-80 which I can get a color and later brown out sps at 20..

anyway i prefer to see slowly color up sps then trying to only mentaining color sps...

or see sps grow from rock out of nowhere

anyway anyone also can be the TOTM if he willy to spend a few $k.. get all color sps and stock up.. and then take photo confirm everyone also say nice one..

Bro, i do agree with you that it can be a pretty satisfying experience to see the brown SPS slowly colouring up... I got a few brown colonies myself too, juz dat I dun post the pics of the brown ones... who wanna see them anyway?! But when SPS shipment comes in I like to buy those with colours and try to maintain the colours... The only problem with brown ones are that u never know if they never ever colour u again, some of the colonies already have problem maintaining it's colours without super super strong lights, not to mention when they have browned out!

Hope to get the chance to see your tank one day! Guess it would be an eye-opening experience!

[alanseah]

Bro, i do agree with you that it can be a pretty satisfying experience to see the brown SPS slowly colouring up... I got a few brown colonies myself too, juz dat I dun post the pics of the brown ones... who wanna see them anyway?! But when SPS shipment comes in I like to buy those with colours and try to maintain the colours... The only problem with brown ones are that u never know if they never ever colour u again, some of the colonies already have problem maintaining it's colours without super super strong lights, not to mention when they have browned out!

Hope to get the chance to see your tank one day! Guess it would be an eye-opening experience!

well of coz will happen because you are choosing those light demanding sps.. which need 400W MH to mentain their color...

use what kind of light will have to go for what type of sps...

[madmac]

Is it not possible to have a detritus-free bare bottom?

Spoken to a couple people and they all have a consensus that it's impossible to keep the bottom detritus free and I do tend to agree with some of the arguments.

However, I've seen quite a number of clean tanks from RC and RAG and I wonder if they are so free to siphon dirt out all the time!

I did plan for a closed loop at the bottom and an underflow. Hope it'll at least minimise the shit! haha.

Pls feel free to contribute to your personal experiences.

Cheers

planetg, it really depends on the flow you hv, as alanseah has correctly pointed out... with his flow rate, any detrital matter will be in the water column.

Even if you could see them, settling at some corner... its only physiologically 'dirty', with the LRs around there are much more you can't see... so I guess its merely getting use to it.

I'm into BB for one month and I still see some very fine sand/detritus, I do believe the sand will eventually disappear, right now I'm arranging the direction of the flow to collect the sand as I dont' want them to be blown back into the rocks... when the LRs have finished shedding the sand in them... thats the time to increase the flow rate and let the skimmer take out the organics.

BTW wat r the arguments that you heard?

[surfedelic]

That's nothing wrong definitely .... . waiting for all those stock to brown out at the LFS and then sell at dirt cheap price ... But sometimes the colors from the sps is not what you want

[planetg]

guys,

can we keep this thread to bare-bottom discussions?

[hamannbmw]

guys,

can we keep this thread to bare-bottom discussions?

[danano]

http://zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=359

Alan, stumbled on a thread where you posted some pics. Those are some awesome colours you're keeping with your bare bottom tank. Well done!

How long have you gone bare bottom? I very recently contemplated going BB but decided on a very shallow sand bed (SSB) instead. With a BB or SSB, have to be disciplined with vacuuming though to keep detritus build-up to a minimum unless there is enough flow (with no dead spots) like in your tank.

It would be great if you could share a pic of your tank with us. There's much that we can learn from your BB experience.

Curious, you've spent thousands of $'s on your high-end equipment but stock up with just leftover $20 browned-out corals? Interesting.

[weisoon]

planetg,

I had about 150Kg of live rocks that were still 'cooking' for nearly a year (intially on a glass tank and now on a tub) and still can find the detritus coming out and settling but to a lesser extend compared to starting out. The only thing was now, the stuff coming out are getting more and more coarse. During the initial stages of cooking, they were mostly quite fine like muck. And all these are still having the skimmer running and 1x Tunze 6100 just for rock blowing. What I can deduce so far was they will still expel the detritus but at a lesser rate probably due to continuous bacteria action as well as by the 'creatures' deep inside the rock.

However, some others may have a different result compared to my way of curing the rocks.

[IanJ]

I just dont get this cooking thing. For sure you kill off the algae, but the rocks are full of worms and god knows what else. Some die off may happen and the amount of rubbish from the rocks gets less, but once in the tank, overtime the worm/bug population is sure to increase again - back to square one?

Sufficient and strong flow to keep any dirt in the water column is the route to success in my opinion.

I also dont get the wet skimming, the mass of air will for sure push out suspended particles, but is the skimmer actually working as a protein skimmer? or would one skimmer wet and one dry be an optimum solution?

[weisoon]

Ian

No doubt that the rock cooking 'system' will be bacteria driven only after the algae died off (I am using Rowaphos + a new NO3 killer product called NitraKiller to help in removal of the initial surge in the NO3). The worms on it will survive and also the crabs . Things will die and a certain dominant species will take over and bloom and then die again due to over population and insufficient food and then another will take over......These cycles will continue till eventually the system stabilised.

Most people in this hobby are very afraid of worms and such found in the rocks. However, they are the best critters to have in the rocks. their movements inside the rock will aid in the removal of NO3 with the process the same as that in the DSB system. If there are no critters or so call 'cleaning' crew in a DSB, overtime the bed will stop working and results in system crash.

On the skimming part, maybe I do not get the meaning of your statement:

'the mass of air will for sure push out suspended particles, but is the skimmer actually working as a protein skimmer?

Actually to skim wet or dry is very up to the individual. Different theories abound. Unless there is a test on the water parameters after a skimmer running over a period of fixed time with one with wet skimmate and the other dry, it will be difficult to test which is more effective. Maybe someone want to do a test/review?

[madmac]

Phosphates, IanJ, thats the idea of rock-cooking, to rid of them.

Rocks are usually full of stored organic PO4, evidence by the algae that grows on them. The algae takes in NO3 and PO4 for growth, it takes-in(reduces) your nutrients.... but over time it will choke the "ANN" process as it covers the entire rock and prevents water flow into the (porous)rocks for the nitrification process to do its job.

The above process was described as algae-driven de-nitrification. Its perfectly ok if the critters go back into the rocks aftter the rock-cooking process... so long as you don't have algae, your rocks become bacteria driven.

Weisoon, I'm curious if you did your cooking in the dark? and is the course stuff solid or fluff?

[weisoon]

Madmac

The cooking was done in the dark. You will be surprised how clean the inside of the cooking tank's surfaces are. The inside of glass will be devoid of any slime film what so ever! And also not to mention the surface of the rocks, white and clean with no slime. However, I will like to point out that about 30%-50% of the coralline survived the darkness.

Now the tub of rock are open to natural sunlight. Another surprising thing to note was once the rock were exposed to the sunlight, the colour of the rock will change from white(those that turned white during the process)will very quickly turn greyish/brown/geen colour? The colour is kinda hard to described but it is very close to the colour that you will find with fresh new rocks from the sea.

The 'stuff' coming out of the rock were initially fluffy like silt/muck and in huge amount when the raw rock fresh from the shop was put in cooking. Even the skimmer will have a hard time to remove them, but then again, maybe my Tunze 6100 is still not strong enough to blow everything in suspension for the skimmer to 'catch' it. Now, the stuff coming out (much lesser) are having a grain size to that of size 0 sand and some upto size 1 sand!

[madmac]

Weisoon, thx for the reply. I'm still doing some test on a set of excess rocks... 1 mth and still lots of filth, like you said, muddy brown.. my still has slime on the rocks, but coraline algae is dying off.

I'm still getting, fine sand detrital from the base rocks in the main tank which were not 'cooked'... and the occasional big grain sand, like 2-3 mm size solid particles, I don't know where that comes from.... : )

Anyway, I think the confusion btw dry skimming vs. wet is that in dry, you take out the organics/food that the bacteria/algae feed on, while in wet you take out the bacteria that feed on the organics. Bacterial being limited by food and habitat.