big tank DSB

[rick rottet]

For aquaculture applications with monospecific vessels of 100 gallons or greater, do DSBs in and of themselves provide adequate biological filtration?:confused:

[Anthony Calfo]

Possible but not likely... it will only work if you do not import gross amounts of organic matter/foodstuffs. For example... if the culture application is fishless and runs with animals/corals that require little or no feeding (tank-o-Xenia... tank-o-Briareum, e.g.), then it can work very fine.

But anything that demands the handling of gross solid matter (overgrowth of algae, feeding of fishes or corals daily) or if the water flow and/or skimming is modest to poor... then it will be a problem.

Perhaps its best then to keep the DSB in a large bucket/barrel inline and downstream for ease of maintenance. Then utilize a primary means of biological filtration (live rock, fluidized bed filters of you must for heavy loads).

kind regards,

Anthony

[rick rottet]

Which brings up the next question; when quarantining large quantities of live rock, is it ok to have multiple rocks in one vessel or should it all be isolated peice by peice? Should the larger pieces be quaratined then broken for propagation attachment or broken and then quarantined? Does it matter either way?

[Anthony Calfo]

QT'ing all together is usually fine if there is adequate space and water flow around each piece (very strong water flow is needed).

The rock also needs to be suspended off of a bare bottomed tank so that some of the undesirables can drop down to the glass bottom (baited and otherwise) to be spotted and removed.

Kindly,

Anthony