DeepBlueWonders;191803 said:
Very cool! I think I might look into this. Amphipods are usually a second food (after mysid shrimp) to cuttlefish hatchlings and you seemed to have quite a few in your 'bed, along with many other similarly sized crustaceans. To me, this seems like something that could very well support cuttle hatchlings, with some research. I don't imagine it could be too efficent though.
It would be nice to find out how many hatchlings per square foot of sand surface can be raised in this way
Also, adding rock with plenty of nook and crannies, and maybe protecting a portion of the sand behind a net would allow the critters to have a safe haven to breed.
Also, what kind of sand do you use in your sand bed and where did you aquire it?
I used Nature's Ocean aragonite. I used two variants: the so-called "live" sand and the dry one. My plan was just to buy dry sand, there's no reason for the so-called "live" sand to be better, but the grain size of the so-called "live" is 0.1 - 0.5 mm, while the dry one is 0.1 - 0.7, so I added several bags of the pricier, "live" sand to favor a smaller grain size.
I didn't wash it either. The finest particles eventually settle (in a week or so) and when bacteria colonize it, the sand tends to stay together unless you point a pump to it directly.
DWhatley;191809 said:
DBW,
Do note Borjam's locality, sourcing sand similarly won't be affordable
(now you see why I try to have members list their local). He did mention it was sugar sand (very fine).
Nature's Ocean is available everywhere, I think
Anyway, according to Shimek, you don't even need aragonite sand. Silica based fine sand from a beach works the same.
With my own experiment (intended for nitrate control), when I do my 2 year (over due) sand removal and replacement (very thin layer on this tank), I will put the old argonite in the bottom and buy some fine sand for a top layer but I want to do more reading to see if this little overflow will be suitable. I think it will work though but my last small DSB took about 4 years before I saw results and then I removed it because it was a PITA (it was in the sump). I'm actually kind of excited about trying this and don't know why I have not already experimented
A year and a half since I set up the tank, I have never cleaned anything on the sand. And it's full of critters.
Have a look at Ron Shimek's website and his book about deep sand beds. People tend to think of this in "technical" or "chemical" terms, I mean, thinking about sand composition, thinking about nitrate reduction... And it's actually biological stuff. I mean, a deep sand bed, well fed and with a suitable population of critters provides live food, the critters consume feces and food remains... and, as a side effect, the oxygen gradient on the sand bed (together with the water circulation caused by the sand dwellers) eases nitrate reduction.
Remember, fine (sugar-size or oolitic) sand. Turns out many critters are unable to live on larger particle sizes.