!!!!LET DETRITUS UNITE US!!! or THE ULTIMATE QUAGMIRE, the uphill battle to eliminate detritus in the reef tank

[flashsmith]

I stir my sand bed every other day. Scrape the glass and baste the rockwork. Get all that "crap" suspended and into the sump. Then do all my water changes from there vacuuming as much out as I can. Never had cyano, algae outbreak, dinos etc... In either one of my tanks. 170 and 80g. It's really not that hard.

 

[ryshark]

I stir my sand bed every other day. Scrape the glass and baste the rockwork. Get all that "crap" suspended and into the sump. Then do all my water changes from there vacuuming as much out as I can. Never had cyano, algae outbreak, dinos etc... In either one of my tanks. 170 and 80g. It's really not that hard.

Which baster do you use? I’ve used 2 and they both make it way too difficult to do that often. 1-the squeeze part pops off and 2-is harder to squeeze so starts to hurt hand/forearm.

 

[Battlecorals]

I gave up running mechanical filtration and my tank looked better imo. I still suck up detritus from 2 spots in my tank once a month but that’s a small effort compared to changing out socks and floss every couple of days.

Yeah, this is reassuring to hear. Thanks for chiming in. Keep us posted.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I moved my tank into a 110gallon vat 3 years ago and only run a skimmer and carbon. Detrius settles in the sump around the liverock. Remaining settles in the bottom. This tank rt now is the only tank that grows and colors up coral.

My 8 month old 400g i have commited to this war on detrius. So far the tank is free of deadspots so nothing settles. I blast the rocks clean as needed and up until last week used below tray for mechanical. Not happy with the detrius accumulating in the sump i am now using a 200 micron sock. Which i have to clean every 2 days. I am looking for a super large sock so i can go days without changing it.

Since i have alot of large tangs its important to remove detritus. PO increase daily by .04ppm. In my QT and backup system with few fish i find mechanical is better left to less is more approach.

 

[Battlecorals]

I moved my tank into a 110gallon vat 3 years ago and only run a skimmer and carbon. Detrius settles in the sump around the liverock. Remaining settles in the bottom. This tank rt now is the only tank that grows and colors up coral.

My 8 month old 400g i have commited to this war on detrius. So far the tank is free of deadspots so nothing settles. I blast the rocks clean as needed and up until last week used below tray for mechanical. Not happy with the detrius accumulating in the sump i am now using a 200 micron sock. Which i have to clean every 2 days. I am looking for a super large sock so i can go days without changing it.

Since i have alot of large tangs its important to remove detritus. PO increase daily by .04ppm. In my QT and backup system with few fish i find mechanical is better left to less is more approach.

I find this extremely interesting. Are we talking about Sps in that in that vat growing well or more forgiving stuff?

 

[Troylee]

Which baster do you use? I’ve used 2 and they both make it way too difficult to do that often. 1-the squeeze part pops off and 2-is harder to squeeze so starts to hurt hand/forearm.

A zip tie works wonders keeping the bulb on a baster lol..

 

[Ashish Patel]

I find this extremely interesting. Are we talking about Sps in that in that vat growing well or more forgiving stuff?

Here is the vat. Deaths and loss def not caused by lack of mechanical just lack of testing water changes etc. Only thing ive done religiously is dose iron and lugols weekly and cleaned skimmer. Maybe 3 waterchanges. I am trying to tear this thing down but waiting on my big tank and QT to be able to get SPS to grow. Until then this blue vat has saved countless strains

 

[Ashish Patel]

I find this extremely interesting. Are we talking about Sps in that in that vat growing well or more forgiving stuff?

Not proud of this tank but here are more pics. This one frag i got last year -Bleeding tree albro (your piece i had to get). Put in Qt for 1 month then my 400 gallon, it browned out completely looked dead for 4 months and finally just put it back in this vat. Now its coloring up, ive had my hardiest acros die in the 400g so this piece is by far the most resilent

 

[Mark Gray]

I currently don't have much SPS but I will again soon. I do not use any filter socks or roller mats. I have Fiji mud in the bottom of my sump, I am just about out of it now, I sort of heard that Fiji way before Fiji stopped exports and bought a lot. I vacuum my sand about 1 time a month. I have not run an ICP test in a long time I will soon. But my sump seems to eat all the Detritus.

 

[Battlecorals]

I currently don't have much SPS but I will again soon. I do not use any filter socks or roller mats. I have Fiji mud in the bottom of my sump, I am just about out of it now, I sort of heard that Fiji way before Fiji stopped exports and bought a lot. I vacuum my sand about 1 time a month. I have not run an ICP test in a long time I will soon. But my sump seems to eat all the Detritus.

Interesting! So does the detritus just not build up down there or you think the mud is playing a part?

 

[Mark Gray]

Interesting! So does the detritus just not build up down there or you think the mud is playing a part?

Yes I guess so Adam. I have Cheeto on top of the mud. My water is very clear but I do run Ozone, but not in my skimmer I have an Ozone reactor. I found that running Ozone in my skimmer seems to make it stop skimming. And when I do water changes I blow off my rocks with a power head and then I pour reef snow in, calcium carbonate and distilled water and it helps pick up the finer particles and I let the skimmer take it out. I have never cleaned my sump out. I may soon but I know it's loaded with bristle worms and pods.

 

[Bruce Burnett]

I don't really do water changes. About every 3-4 months I pull my pumps and clean them depending on mood I might suck out sump I don't do mechanical filtration. My skimmer is set so dry it pulls very little. Have a gac reactor and an ats. Have about 3 inch of sand bed. I can go a couple weeks with out cleaning glass. Feed fairly heavy. I had to add nitrates as they were zero and phosphate runs .01 to .03. Don't care about detritus. Use kalk stirrer at night and dose all for reef during the day. As long as fish and corals doing well and no problems like algae or cyano I don't hardly test. Check salinity once a month and alk about every two weeks. I look at detritus as the inert leftovers after all the biodiversity has consumed organics.
Best way to blow off rock work is a small pump forget using a baster. Have not done that on current tank. It is going on two years old. Only a 100 gallon display. Use to have a 300 gallon but moved and down sized.

 

[atoll]

I have started a few threads on here about detritus. I haven't used mechanical filtration apart from a skimmer for many years. I find mechanical filtration unnecessary. I proclaim detritus is wonderful stuff, it feeds many corals esp SPS corals.
To the Op, it is possibly to have no mechanical filtration and no brown or yellow tinge to your water using an Oxydator as I do and promote.

 

[AlexandraDreadlocksPanda]

There is no mechanical filtration in the sea, maybe a good start

You can’t compare a natural reef ecosystem to what we do at home… unless you’re going to turn flow up to washing machine levels twice a day for several hours then do a 100% water change with water of nearly exactly the same parameters, and enriched with Phyto and zooplankton, you’ll not even come close…
And strictly speaking, the plethora of filter feeding organisms of the reef, plus foam fractionation from pounding waves are natural mechanical filtration in the sea…

 

[atoll]

You can’t compare a natural reef ecosystem to what we do at home… unless you’re going to turn flow up to washing machine levels twice a day for several hours then do a 100% water change with water of nearly exactly the same parameters, and enriched with Phyto and zooplankton, you’ll not even come close…
And strictly speaking, the plethora of filter feeding organisms of the reef, plus foam fractionation from pounding waves are natural mechanical filtration in the sea…

I think most of us know that. However, comparisons are there to be made. We may not be able to replicate the reef as you suggest but we have many of the elements of it some more some much less.
That's is why we are now able to not only sustain these corals but also propagate them. We have detritus phytoplankton zooplankton bacteria and many more. Granted not on the scale of the reef but then does it really matter.

 

[HuneyBear]

Unless you’re getting higher test readings than what you are aiming for does that layer of muck really matter? You are never going to replicate the ocean/reef because you can never get all the bacteria and microorganisms and ecosystems there. We have a fraction of that food chain. Everything has something that eats it in nature. We’ve taken a shovel full and put it in a jar, albeit some have larger shovels and jars. I want my tank to be healthy and thrive but at what point do I say I’m not adding another filter for the filter of the filter. You have to filter stuff out because you’re putting more in than what’s getting used because we lack that whole ocean to flush excess away. We all end up pushing all the excess to the sump because we don’t want to look at it, and we clear out the stuff that’s trying to eat that stuff with it. Are we over filtering now?? Is this all science fact? No, it could be science fiction in my crazy mind.

 

[Battlecorals]

In my basement set up with a big stock tank sump, about once a month, I would shut the pumps off and then stir up the water tremendously in ther and get all the detritus off the bottom and then literally pump it out. That’s kind of how I did my water changes down there and it was really effective at eliminating a lot of the detritus all in one big scoop

but again I just don’t know if the built up detritus was actually causing a problem in the first place. I’m trying to figure out a way I could do that in my upstairs system but I haven’t really come up with a decent way. The sump is really big and kind of in a quirky spot to do this.

Maybe someone could help answer if I took a big clump of settled detritus and slopped in a triton test vile with a little bit of water and sent it off for a test, do you think there be anything conclusive in the results?

 

[atoll]

Maybe someone could help answer if I took a big clump of settled detritus and slopped in a triton test vile with a little bit of water and sent it off for a test, do you think there be anything conclusive in the results?

I doubt it, first of all there would be more detritus in you're vile to the amount water in it than in your tank. Secondly you have no way of knowing how old that detritus is. If it was fresh then it would most probably still be breaking down. If it was a few months old then it might already be inert. Far too many variables IMO.

 

[nothing_fancy]

Back in the day I had a tank where I stacked my rock work against the back wall and left it, didn't get back there to clean anything for probably a year. The rest of the tank looked decent but the detritus situation behind and under the rock work was so bad and I believe it played a part in me having one of the biggest bristle worms Ive ever seen. Never again. The system I have now has an overkill amount of flow for its size and Ive put a little jebao under the rock work thats the furthest back toward the wall, keeps any of those my cryptic areas pretty clean. As far as maintenance on detritus, I use this giant syringe thing I got on amazon to suck most of it out of the sump, I leave some, and then I also use that to blow off the rocks and sand. Afterward I shutdown all flow 75% and skimmer off then I dump in coral snow and let it sit for about a half hour. Afterward skimming and filtration goes back on and Ive found that it really helps with keeping all that stuff in check, the snow that is. Im not sure if this is what a flocculant actually does but from what Im seeing its been helpful.

 

[sixty_reefer]

plus foam fractionation from pounding waves are natural mechanical filtration in the sea…

Where’s the collection cup

we can mimic all aspects of the ocean including natural filtration made by many organisms, mostly bacteria that is limited by nutrients in home aquaria. Most just don’t know how to apply it that’s all.