Detritus is it as bad as some make out?

[ca1ore]

Taste test?

Well, I have ingested more than my fair share of detritus laden water attempting to start a siphon hose ...... after siphoning out detritus (which I do occasionally for aesthetic reasons) I used to wait for the particulates to settle and then test the clear water for nitrates/phosphates to see if the levels were higher than the remaining display water. They never were. It's crude, as I noted, with lots of ways to introduce error; but it's a least a data point(s) in discussions that always seem to lack actual data. Friend of mine recently entered the hobby and said his biggest surprise was the data-lacking, dogmatic opinions of many. He's an audiophile, so I pointed out that the same thing holds there too LOL

 

[Nano sapiens]

Thats a great write up, I have a 50 cube and minimal sump space. I do have detritus in my sump but I also run a mesh filter sock on my system most days. I started my system with all dry rock ....... so here's the golden question, How does one with a smaller system build a healthy micro fauna and pod population? I have zero room for a fuge and I have a wrasse, scooter blenny, and a coral beauty angel that are all seen at picking at the rock work all day long. I consider my self to have a healthy system as its 7 months old now but I strive to have a healthy pod population as well as micro fauna both for my fish and corals .

If you are looking for pod and worm proliferation, then a separate fuge without predators would be key. The bigger the fuge, the larger the potential population. The little critters need substrate, so you could go shallow or deep sand bed, miracle mud, macro algae, live rock, etc. The more varied the habitat, the more different types of creatures can make a home.

Ralph.

 

[rosshamsandwich]

IME (I used to have a small sumped 55g running for nearly 10 years), to have a fully functional and effective DSB with loads of infauna in a 50g system a separate large sump/fuge to house the DSB would be needed. Trying to maintain a fully functional DSB (as discribed by Shimek) in the display with fish and inverts is possible, but would require a regular replenishment source of micro/macro fauna that would need to be introduced regularly and is beyond what most of us could (or would) be willing to provide.

The good news is that the maintenance of a large infauna population is not a prerequisite for a successful reef aquarium. Regular detritus removal, by whatever means one chooses, can keep even a quite small system healthy for many years (going on 10 years for my 12g nano).

Ralph.

I have pods running around in broad daylight in my display tank with lots of fish. I have worm channels in my DSB in my display tank with tons of microfauna in that sand bed, with all kinds of wrasses... I have no sump. How is that possible?

 

[Nano sapiens]

I have pods running around in broad daylight in my display tank with lots of fish. I have worm channels in my DSB in my display tank with tons of microfauna in that sand bed, with all kinds of wrasses... I have no sump. How is that possible?

You feed your tank so much that the fish are too full and lazy to go after the resident pods/worms?

How big is your tank? How many fish? It's all relative. One thing about making statements in this hobby is that no two systems are alike. Comments from even the best experts are based largely on personal experience and can't possible apply to all systems.

 

[rosshamsandwich]

I also have a ten gallon sumpless that I bought from Petco dollar per gallon sale. Imagine my surprise when I see pods running all over my frag disks...This tank has Clownfish, Damsel, sixline and goby.... How is that possible????

 

[brandon429]

I still have pods too, they ride over in the rocks even after a bed is rinsed clean. its true they aren't in the same numbers, but to be honest with you nobody is missing them when they rinse a bed of its waste and beat a long term invader like cyano or diatoms.

hasn't there been a recent poll asking what % of people stir or clean a sandbed? curious as to what that would say nowadays

 

[rosshamsandwich]

I still have pods too, they ride over in the rocks even after a bed is rinsed clean. its true they aren't in the same numbers, but to be honest with you nobody is missing them when they rinse a bed of its waste and beat a long term invader like cyano or diatoms.

hasn't there been a recent poll asking what % of people stir or clean a sandbed? curious as to what that would say nowadays

The pods are smart. They are hiding in the live rock crevices where they won't be preyed on. Try this.. Take a red flashlight in the middle of night...You will see swarms of pods come out while the fish are sleeping...

 

[rosshamsandwich]

If you are looking for pod and worm proliferation, then a separate fuge without predators would be key. The bigger the fuge, the larger the potential population. The little critters need substrate, so you could go shallow or deep sand bed, miracle mud, macro algae, live rock, etc. The more varied the habitat, the more different types of creatures can make a home.

Ralph.

Did you edit your post?

 

[Nano sapiens]

I also have a ten gallon sumpless that I bought from Petco dollar per gallon sale. Imagine my surprise when I see pods running all over my frag disks...This tank has Clownfish, Damsel, sixline and goby.... How is that possible????

Heavy feeding . I had the same situation when I first set up my 12g with a similar fish load. I had amphipods running all over and was growing 12" long bristle worms! The downside is that all that food, especially in an immature system, can cause nitrates to rise (I had 30 ppm+ at one point) and promote cyano/algae proliferation. I saw this at around the 8 - 12 month mark, and then experienced a nasty brown jelly infection shortly thereafter that took out most of my LPS corals.

A gradual decrease in the food input along with some detritus removal helped to stabilize my nano.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Did you edit your post?

Yes. I realized that 'Curryb15' wasn't asking about DSBs specifically, but rather how to raise pods and such. A DSB is not needed specifically for that and my long winded post was just that...long winded

 

[rosshamsandwich]

If you see brown jelly infection, dip with iodine. I use Seachem Reef Dip.

 

[Nano sapiens]

If you see brown jelly infection, dip with iodine. I use Seachem Reef Dip.

Sometimes works, didn't in my case 8 years ago.

 

[atoll]

22 months on and I continue to run with no prefiltration what so ever (again unless you want to call protein skimmer) I do run an ATS on top of my sump and my nutrients are all but undetectable. I have a lot of water movement in the DT but I still get detritus in my sand not that it bothers me in the least. I only have a sprinkling of detritus in the sump and must admit I was expecting to see move after all this time. Maybe one day the majority of reefkeepers will change their views on the evil nasty detritus.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Maybe one day the majority of reefkeepers will change their views on the evil nasty detritus.

Running a tank without any detritus whatsoever is not ideal, nor is running a tank fully loaded with it. As with many reef related things, balance is important.

 

[atoll]

Running a tank without any detritus whatsoever is not ideal, nor is running a tank fully loaded with it. As with many reef related things, balance is important.

I guess that will depend on what you consider "Fully loaded" Have you not read Randy Holmes=Farley's reply to my first post?

 

[Paul B]

The majority of us are landlocked, ipsf closing, we’re diversity doomed pretty much

I guess you have to move.

 

[Nano sapiens]

I'm not sure what you are getting at here as everything depends on degree. Once again, no one is saying that a reef tank without any detritus at all is optimal.

Randy didn't have 1" of mulm in his display, just in his sump. I've yet to find a nice reef tank with a 1-2" layer of detritus everywhere in both the display and the sump, but you may know of an example?

From what I see, what has been established in the hobby is that large systems can tolerate detritus build up for much longer periods than smaller ones. You have a large system, I believe, but have you run a small nano for many, many years without some form of detritus control?

Ralph.

 

[brandon429]

As this thread continues, remember we're not calling out anyone that runs a detritus capturing system. That's every reef that ever came from a 90s reefer, ya'll have the majority. we all started that way, we're all detritus capturers until something makes us change. either nitrate readings, or the countless posts online of nitrate problems that were mitigated by going bare bottom, or by stirring as prevention, or by rip cleaning the whole bed as I do. some opt of of sandbedding through careful planning and research.
hands off sandbedding is a niche practice now, fiercely guarded agreed.

any system that has a large crash or fish loss event resulting from hardware failture/delay time until fixed/cannot eliminate detritus as a contributing factor for the BOD during the duress event and systemic reasons listed prior, im sure the impacts range system to system and are closely tied to other variables we could only guess about. in my opinion the massive amount of competing mixed heterotrophic bacteria that are famed in heavy detritus loading will contribute largely to loss cascades as soon as the O2 balances they're used to get depleted. detritus in the challenged reef is harmful compared to a low organic reserves comparative tank.

we're simply building in a bit more safety redundancy in the cleaner systems, for the masses to have (and report back) success, better statistics when 100 tanks are sampled after 5 years, yep.

We have retail feeds and dosers that run cleaner and specific to certain nutrients vs the detritus to me its not downing the old system at all, there's much to be said about earning the ideal balance Scott mentioned. in order to work on wrecked and invaded tanks, I need the beds clean first.

in order to crank out mass nanos, we need the cleaner approach vs the old school one, just trends coming and going and this is the current wave.

in order to move a tank and skip cycle it, one must not move the detritus unless going on pure luck is the goal.

99% of any reef setup on this board, track it, over the next five years, after five years, will not have an amazing sandbed full of worms and moving animals which would be astounding. if dredge sampled, their bed will be six gammarids, three unidentified worms, a brittle star, and pure invasion fuel mud.

You have to farm a sandbed into the stuff marine studies are based on, our tanks don't have that destiny and frankly that's a bunch of bioload contribution Im not sure Id want it compared to other forms of bed arrangement. people online have been sending me sandbed pics for about ten yrs straight, nothing fancy, ever.

just mud

I bet a plenum system is more efficient than just the piles of straight sand we use.

anyone who can refresh a system with high volumes of these pods to even approach a natural balance is a 1% reefer.

 

[atoll]

Does it matter where the detritus is in the sump or in the DT sand? I am not convinced. I guess it might if it completely clogged a DSB with ;
little fauna in it.
I have just blasted a small area of my sand in my DT to stir up the detritus not because I feel it's causing any hard but to feed my corals as I do now and again but then I only blast a relatively small area as I don't have the access behind my reefscape etc. The fish enjoy getting in close to see what pickings are flushed out to feed on. My sand in my DT isn't thick it varies from next to nothing to about 2.1/2" due to the amount of water movement I have which is considerable but I still get detritus in the sand. I am aware that this probably won't be considered by some as a large amount of detritus but quite honestly I don't know how much I have in my DT due to the reason given above but there are 22 months worth in one form or another. I guess I would only find out if I was to strip the tank down but I have no plans to do that at the moment of course

 

[brandon429]

Waters had a sick remote dsb setup I think it was

that's not a dsb catching nine angel fish worth of waste pellets since 2010

that's pre filtered for detritus. its scaling is appropriate for the way its plumbed, and if we read those remote DSB tanks some of those guys have sandbeds as deep up to elbows, never touched, with the right amounts/timing/speed of mineralization going on.

my beef is with display tank sandbeds. reef diapers, and the overuse of reef desitin vs just changing them.

I believe your marine snow approach is legit. its not like you are kicking up a blackened section as ten month catch up, your sandbed cross section pic w probably show relatively clean. for sure I don't think its bad across the board, its just implicated in a lot of variation for reef tanks. nearly every GHA challenge tank has a sandbed that would cloud if disturbed for example. likely that some form of mechanical filtration uptakes some of the detritus for export as well...socks etc. done routinely I can see a benefit.

if another reefer has a great grazer balance, QT's really well to reduce wild imports of invaders, yet they store up more detritus than a neighbor and still reef successfully that is no surprise. the cleaner systems wont require such deft control to simply crank out corals and purple rocks.

its not immediate poison, only a challenge under accumulation and for sure its a valid part of the biosystem in balance as NS mentioned