Quote:
|
YES!.........Clean sand won't clump right?
|
yep it can scoot, it can melt and then fuse. This is another reason for good critter stirring, with that you can avoid it.
Quote:
|
YES~~~~~Will waste clump anyway, maybe just smaller more managable clumps?
|
What happens in sediment beds is that the waste/food/dtritus/enzynes/microbes and so on form a type of bile, or reef snot as we used to call it, lol Examples are, when a worm swallows the sand, then poops it back out, a bunch of other stuff comes out with it (slime from the digestive tract of the worm) also when bacteria reduce things they just dont go up to it and chomp they use enzynes and acids to melt it first then they suck it in. On a side not I believe more elemental replenishment comes from that then lower ph. So you got a stew in their no matter what. Now bacteria live in this world and no how to get things done in that enviroment, but they can also get overwhelmed, this is where build up and clogs occur (example: big clump of food gets stuck in a corner under a rock, well you can kiss the filtration efforts in that zone goodbye for awhile. The enviroment has just changed in that area, now thier is an anaerobic zone right on top under that chunk, with the areobic zone surrounded the tops and exposed) thier is nothing static about a sand substraight.
Coug about time, lol great to have you in here, and your questions are dead on.
Quote:
|
As I understand things, there is a problem with aragonite based substrates binding phosphates (along with other undesirable things). In a plenum, there is an acidic layer that will slowly dissolves the substrate helping maintain the calcium levels in the tank. Would this not release the phosphates back into the water to do more damage?
|
Excellent question and yes that is the main problem, but what we are trying to do is to solve that problem. What happens is that the ph decreases the further down in the bed you go, the lower ph melts the sand and thus releases the what ever is bound in it. So in what we are doing is that we are using larger sediment in order to keep the substriaght fully oxygenated (by size of particle and water flow) this will not allow for the lowering of ph and thus no unbinding. The reaction zone or plenum zone is where all the lower ph and denitrifing occurs. you will get some melt down thier which will unbind the the sand and release its composition, but again with the larger particles and good flow it will quickly bind the phosphate back up because the water in the be is oxygenated and thus higher in ph, tough to explain, tell me if I didnt.
In regard to the balance coug we are looking at a remote system, with no rocks on top, we kind eleminated that intank concept earlier.
Mike