What’s your opinion on the role of detritus in a reef tank

[brandon429]

there is one key context missing from trying to tie in oceanic studies into reef tanks

dilution

in the wild, they're not swimming in dissolved organic compounds

they're getting meaty items floating by, but in clean waters, cuz there's no time to degrade...currents move things along swiftly and it lands in turtle grass zones to compile. What grows well in those zones is cyano etc

reef tanks are opposite, its stew water + some occasional suspended feed we're fighting, and since the balance is much harder to actually sustain for decades vs short term, we can see a movement to detritus catching (roller mats) and bare bottom/throughput style systems which easily do work across tanks consistently.

 

[andrewkw]

I have so many detrivores. Why would I want to remove their food source? Of course, I enjoy all creatures in my reef, not just the flashy stuff

If you don't remove any eventually your tank will be 100% detritus. Maybe not for 10 or 20 years but it will happen. Long before that of course something may cause a population boom then crash of the creatures inside causing issues long before you don't have room for new corals because detritus has filled your tank.

I have a picture someone of a regular water change but couldn't find it. This was from cleaning out an 8x4 marine pure block after 3 years.

I have changed filter socks at least once a week every single week and sometimes twice a week. Due to carbon dosing I cannot forget as the sock will clog by day 7 or 8. I periodically look under my live rock and occasionally blow out some of the detritus. About once a year I do the sump and overflow. If I miss a year there that's fine because I'm removing weekly from the display.

This is my frag tank sump which is really just live rock. It was re-setup less then a year ago and has had detritus removal since then :

My tanks are all real live rock and all kinds of critters. The last time I got any new live rock was over 10 years ago and still random new stuff pops up, but so do population booms and crashes. This is not an annual problem and maybe not even a semi annual problem, but ignoring this entirely eventually will become a problem. Sooner in sandbeds, but even in bare bottom it will eventually do more harm then good either due to some sort of water quality issues or just the fact this is unsightly.

 

[ScottR]

If you don't remove any eventually your tank will be 100% detritus. Maybe not for 10 or 20 years but it will happen. Long before that of course something may cause a population boom then crash of the creatures inside causing issues long before you don't have room for new corals because detritus has filled your tank.

I have a picture someone of a regular water change but couldn't find it. This was from cleaning out an 8x4 marine pure block after 3 years.

I have changed filter socks at least once a week every single week and sometimes twice a week. Due to carbon dosing I cannot forget as the sock will clog by day 7 or 8. I periodically look under my live rock and occasionally blow out some of the detritus. About once a year I do the sump and overflow. If I miss a year there that's fine because I'm removing weekly from the display.

This is my frag tank sump which is really just live rock. It was re-setup less then a year ago and has had detritus removal since then :

My tanks are all real live rock and all kinds of critters. The last time I got any new live rock was over 10 years ago and still random new stuff pops up, but so do population booms and crashes. This is not an annual problem and maybe not even a semi annual problem, but ignoring this entirely eventually will become a problem. Sooner in sandbeds, but even in bare bottom it will eventually do more harm then good either due to some sort of water quality issues or just the fact this is unsightly.

Your bottom looks spankin clean. Mine has coralline, green and brown film.

 

[andrewkw]

Your bottom looks spankin clean. Mine has coralline, green and brown film.

Only light source is the window. Bottom of tank is painted white so very little light spill comes from the tank itself. There is quite a bit of detritus.

 

[brandon429]

detritivores produce detritus they dont just uptake it, thats a major tenet needing address

they can extract nutrients from already reduced substrates, but they expel just about as much as they take in. they're expendable in a reef tank. worms, pods, starfish, snails, slow movers, cucs, all fill beds with waste they dont reduce it.

fish, active turners, diving wrasses, kick it up into suspension for real removal.

 

[atoll]

At what point does detritus become inert or at least stop breaking down more or less into nitrate and phosphate. BRS did some investigation into this but they only looked into the first few days I think. They did conclude you need to clean your filter wool, socks or whatever daily which is when nitrate production seems at its highest. Most people will clean their socks etc weekly or every few days when the detritus has already released a lot of its nuitrents. Let's not forget there are plenty of people having to dose nitrate and phosphate and struggle to get them to rise to a level they want them to be.

 

[brandon429]

this is the most civil discussion on detritus in the history of web posting i must be in the twlght zne

 

[atoll]

this is the most civil discussion on detritus in the history of web posting i must be in the twlght zne

An, your just dreaming, you will wake soon enough.

 

[Intense37754]

there is one key context missing from trying to tie in oceanic studies into reef tanks

dilution

in the wild, they're not swimming in dissolved organic compounds

they're getting meaty items floating by, but in clean waters, cuz there's no time to degrade...currents move things along swiftly and it lands in turtle grass zones to compile. What grows well in those zones is cyano etc

reef tanks are opposite, its stew water + some occasional suspended feed we're fighting, and since the balance is much harder to actually sustain for decades vs short term, we can see a movement to detritus catching (roller mats) and bare bottom/throughput style systems which easily do work across tanks consistently.

Ok, agree but at what point is the flow in your tank suspending most and what’s not consumed being removed through filtration. I’m referring to a display tank and not the sump. I have 2 gyres that keeps the fishies paying attention throughout the day.

On the detritus note, it is cleaning day as the salt is thoroughly mixed, time to feed then clean

 

[Intense37754]

An, your just dreaming, you will wake soon enough.

Btw, mine is civil, not arguing just curious

 

[ScottR]

FWIW ~ I know it’s kind of counterculture in thinking, but I keep a couple colonies of dendrophyllia. They help to eat uneaten fish food as they capture it in the flow. And when I peek in at night with a light, I see lots of particulate matter floating around and I can see the dendros actively catching the things as they pass by. So people think that keeping dendros means you must feed more, hence increasing nutrients. However, I feel they’re just helping to eat food passing by from feedings and whatever is in the water column at night. Perhaps I’ll take a video sometime.

 

[atoll]

Btw, mine is civil, not arguing just curious

Glad you cleared that up not that I am sure what you are talking about

 

[ca1ore]

I used to obsessively remove detritus from my reef tanks, now I mostly don’t worry about it. Current system is the most successful tank I’ve ever kept. Now, a lot of other things have changed on my tank, many in service of nutrient export, so I’m not going to suggest that detritus removal is entirely pointless but I do think the negative consequences of it are exaggerated. I also have a number of detritivores that live in the accumulations; eventually it becomes inert. I don’t like detritus build up in the display, so there’s an aesthetic dimension as well. Very high flow and a hard working chevron tang keeps the display observably clear.

 

[Orko]

The sump in my tank is over 20 yrs old and has never been cleaned EVER it has a good 1" to 2" of detritus in it at this point I am afraid to remove it it is like my good luck charm... I do not use any kind of filter sock or floss it is an open system. I have a crushed coral bed about 1" deep that has been there just as long I stur it up every now and the where I can get to it. I have no issues with it or my tank.. I feed every day and do not have crazy amounts of bristle worms.

 

[KrisReef]

My 120 is bare bottom. That being said detrius builds up in one place for bi monthly removal.
I cant get to whats under rocks and dont try.
What I notice is po4 before blowing off rocks and letting settle is around .02ish.
After it is .06ish everytime.
Anyone else notice this trend.
Corals also like it.

Do you think that the phosphorus is adhered to the detritus particles cals and that increasing the particals is solution allows for the P to be measured when the reagents dissolved it in the test sample?

 

[Bpb]

My overflow weir has about 8”x4”x6” of pure detritus at the bottom of it.

Can’t help but think it’s now behaving like a deep sandbed ha ha

 

[Lasse]

Wake up Brandon - here it comes

detritivores produce detritus they dont just uptake it, thats a major tenet needing address

they can extract nutrients from already reduced substrates, but they expel just about as much as they take in. they're expendable in a reef tank. worms, pods, starfish, snails, slow movers, cucs, all fill beds with waste they dont reduce it.

fish, active turners, diving wrasses, kick it up into suspension for real removal.

Nearly all living poikilotherms will convert around 20 % of the organics of the ingested stuff into new biomass and excrete the rest of the organics together with indigestible matter as both organic and inorganic substances. With other words - if an animal ingest detritus of organic origin - it will block around 20 % of that into biomass and leave the rest to next organism - that will block 20 % and so on. After countless recirculations - the rest is mineralized detritus and dissolved inorganic nutrients - of no concern as load in a biological system if there is organism using photosynthesis in the system. The dissolved inorganic leftover like PO4 and different inorganic N species will be food for primary producers like algae (including zooxanthellae of corals and other animals carrying zooxanthellae) and plants (mostly in freshwater - few plants in salt water) In a well working system - input of organic nutrients and consumption of organic/inorganic nutrient in the system are in balance with each other. If the inorganic nutrients rise in the system - either the input is to large or the consumption is to low. If the inorganic nutrients are zero - either the input is to low or the consumption to high.

My aquarium is run by ecological principles there I (as human) most of the time only is a viewer. I try to stay out from that ecosystem

Here is my first sump apartment - never ever been cleaned or touched in any way during nearly 4 yeras

​

The return chamber - same treatment

​

And here is my well worked out sand in the DT - However - not by me - I´m lazy - my animals of different taxa is responsible for this good looking - nearly 4 years old rather thin sandbed (4-7 cm deep)

My refuge has a sandbed around 20 - 25 cm and it has been untouched (of me) for around 2.5 years

How my DT looks like - please see my build thread

With other words - the proof is in the pudding

Sincerely Lasse

 

[atoll]

There you are my old friend.
Do you think your Oxydator in some way impacts upon either the detritus or the end products of it?
You already know ⁹I am a big advocator of Oxydators and have my model A with 12% peroxide and 2 catalysts in the sump of my 530ltr aquarium. Not that I want to get into more discussion on Oxydators here, we have debated such many times.

 

[brandon429]

we cannot agree its intert mineralized waste, since its killing some tanks that do home moves without following surgical order of ops. There is marked consequence in viewing detritus as neutral, in all cases. somewhere that loop you describe Lasse gets interrupted, and bad things happen, for many tanks that compact in waste.

perhaps one way this alteration happens is sinked waste getting trapped in tight/anoxic zones up under rocks where the turnover animals cannot access. as soon as the zone becomes gray/stinking it repels incursion from those animals, and the zone grows relative to risk when access time comes

given no dead zones and all active animals interacting with detritus, it really may be kept neutral agreed.

 

[Vette67]

I guess I do all 3. My DT is a 180 with a 1” or so shallow sand bed. I also have a 75 bare bottom, and my fuge is a 40 with a DSB. I have never in 20 years done any mechanical filtration. I have also never in 20 years, cleaned my sand in my 180. I view the sand bed as a living, breathing, integral part of my filtration system. On the other hand, I view my sump and 75 as dropout boxes. When I do water changes, I vacuum the accumulated detritus from both.

I believe that the critical thing missing in reef tanks today is biodiversity. I ordered my live rock in the 90’s when it was trans-shipped from Fiji to my front door, hitch hikers and all. I have been thinking recently about ways to introduce even more biodiversity to my system by possibly getting some more aquacultured live rock (that I don’t otherwise need), because I’ve heard older tanks can lose biodiversity in bacterial colonies.

This is definitely an interesting conversation. I like hearing how each one of us approach issues in our systems. I guess I just hedge my bets and do a little of each approach. I leave my sand bed alone, but also regularly vacuum detritus.