Greetings from Spain

DBW,
Do note Borjam's locality, sourcing sand similarly won't be affordable :biggrin2: (now you see why I try to have members list their local). He did mention it was sugar sand (very fine).

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 :roll:
 
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 :smile: 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 :biggrin2: (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 :wink: 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 :roll:

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.
 
DWhatley;191834 said:
I'll definitely take a look at the website. Neal has already started thinking of a way to baffle the flow to get maximum exposure.

My little grasshopper: You might be approaching it in the wrong way already. These are biological processes that really work better with a laid back, hands-off approach. I think you are beginning to think too much about the technical issues :wink:

You need:

- Sand of the right grain sizes (aragonite or silica)

- Enough sand surface exposed to the water

- Seed it with live rock, maybe borrowing critters from someone with a DSB

- Time to make sure the populations are well established

- Food, but I guess that, cephs being messy eaters, plenty of food will go around the tank

Some experimentation would be useful to find out the best way to maximize the population of mysiids and amphipods, though.

An example: this is around 30 minutes after turning off the lights.

DSB surface at night
 
LOL, no, not over engineering. The area I have for this experiment (my goal is nitrate reduction, not critters for food) is rather narrow but 18" deep and at the end of my tank (think small sump on the side rather than at the back). The water flowing to it needs channeling to ensure it does not take the path of least resistance straight to the sump so a baffle will help ensure the water flows across the sand bed. I won't be able to use it for hatchlings as the tank would overflow if I reduced the single outflow by octoproofing the outlet.
 
Exactly. Given certain maximum depth (around 12 cm) nitrate reduction depends on surface AND critter population.

But, how many amphipods and mysiids does a hatchling need per day? Imagine you can feed the hatchlings with a varied diet of well fed crustaceans. That's my point.
 
I DO like the critter idea for a nursery and think it worth exploring but a DSB and an adult octopus are not likely to work out well. This is conjecture and there are octopuses that live in the bottom substrate that might benefit but the primary concern is disruption of the anaerobic bacteria that would pollute the water. Growing anaerobic bacteria deep in the sand is the main goal of a nitrate reducing DSB but would be undesirable for the thinner sand bed with critters that disrupt it.
 
borjam;191883 said:
But, how many amphipods and mysiids does a hatchling need per day? Imagine you can feed the hatchlings with a varied diet of well fed crustaceans. That's my point.

My current hatchlings (shared journal listed here: Cuttle egg adventure) are eating about 10 mysid each, per day. With my 12 hatchlings, I go through 120-150 mysid per day. I give them amphipods as a treat every now and then. But now they are being transitioned onto shore shrimp.

It seems that a DBS like yours could possibly raise 1 or 2 cuttle hatchlings. Any more than that and the cuttles might rid your sand bed of everything.
 
DWhatley;191885 said:
I DO like the critter idea for a nursery and think it worth exploring but a DSB and an adult octopus are not likely to work out well. This is conjecture and there are octopuses that live in the bottom substrate that might benefit but the primary concern is disruption of the anaerobic bacteria that would pollute the water. Growing anaerobic bacteria deep in the sand is the main goal of a nitrate reducing DSB but would be undesirable for the thinner sand bed with critters that disrupt it.
Of course, I was talking about hatchlings and very young specimens. Adults can't feed just on these tiny critters.

Regarding the disturbance, turns out that the DSB needs the right kind of disturbance, provided by the sand dwelling critters such as tanaids, worms, etc. Of course, unless the sand bed was much deeper, even sand dwelling gobies, except for the really small (I have an Amblygobius rainfordi) would be too much.

Two cuttle hatchlings in 300 litres sounds like a reasonable deal, doesn't it? Moreover, with a working DSB you wouldn't need to be painstakingly breeding mysiids. Just feed "the tank" with good quality fish food, which mysiids, amphipods et al consume greedily, and there you are :smile:

Anyway, the good thing about a DSB is that it has two beneficial effects, and actually one cannot work without the other. Nitrate reduction and live food production.

If you know Spanish there's a Youtube video of a talk I gave on DSBs. Actually, among the audience was a well known Spanish ceph expert, who had just given a talk on Architeuthis :smile:
 
I learned to poorly speak enough Spanish to survive a month in Chile without getting into too much trouble thanks to the the great people there and my exchange student daughters from Northern Spain were patient with my attempts but I would not get much out of the video.

Language fluency is not strong in the US and I fall in the category marked by the cliché:

If a person speaks three languages he/she is tri-lingual.
If a person speaks two languages he/she is bi-lingual.
If a person speaks one language he/she is American

I DO speak several computer languages though :wink:
 

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