Filter this Through that Thick Skull of Your's-Newbie!!

[Paul B]

I'm not going anywhere near this one.

[thrlride]

Where's my beer and popcorn, this is going to get GOOD.

[WaterKeeper]

The bare bottom crowd has yet to jump in so in all fairness I will give you the link to Starboard Reef (sorry about the missing pics). This is the thread that really started the BB craze here on RC. My link will take you to the start but beware, it is even longer than my longest thread and has been split on three occasions. It does give a good account of why one would chose BB but tends to overlook the biggest issue $$$.

Now as I have said the BB tank relies on LR to do all the natural filtration and skimming to remove dissolved substances. This was the whole idea of the original Berlin System. A DSB was mainly added to handle ever increasing demands to have more and more in the tank while keeping nitrates in check. When done correctly a DBS would denitrify and further process detritus that ended up in the bottom of the tank. With higher flows in the tank these days it is possible for the LR alone to handle more load than the original Berlin Tanks. Also, if you read through the Starboard Reef, experienced reefers are more likely to do the mundane task of cleaning the tank bottom daily and not overdoing the loading. This makes this method a pretty good alternative and, best of all, one doesn't need to buy a bunch of expensive LS.

Sometime things get a little silly on these boards and that was about to happen in this case. There were rather nasty threads and claims made that the reef establishment was the one to promote DSB mainly to line their own pockets. Honestly Folks, I have yet to have a single dollar or gift presented to me by the LS establishment to this day. I don't have the facts or figures on the annual world exports on LS but I would not tend to think Bill Bates made his money that way.

Shortly before the BB craze started Doc Ron had some articles that indicated that heavy metal precipitation in the DSB would be suddenly released and would kill off a tank without warning in what is known as Old Tank Syndrome, OTS. It was certainly a possible theory but not one bit of data was presented to support the theory and even today the reported cases of OTS are infrequent and could be caused by many reasons. In fact, they were reported in older Berlin Systems before DSB was used.

Another interesting thing is phosphate. Claims are made that a BB system will have better phosphate control than a DSB. Certainly religious cleaning of the tank bottom will remove phosphate and it is true that a DSB will not remove phosphate but only works to mineralize it to inorganic phosphate. As the BB craze developed there was somewhat of a reversal of how things work when macro algae was advocated to export nutrients form the tank. That is nothing new--everybody using a DSB knew that having a fuge with macro growing in it would insure better water quality if the macro was harvested on a regular basis. In other words growing macro aids either system equally and is even more important to a BB system as it may be a major source of nitrate export.

But you said the LR would handle denitrification didn't you WK? And I did, but LR can only handle so much and it started in even crazier fad, LR cooking. Here LR would be placed in unlighted curing vats for weeks or months and left to die and rot. The theory here was that the LR ran out of stream handling the load of a BB system and this would rejuvenate it. The pore structure fills with biological material over time and denitrification is halted. The cooking process induces some form of endogenous respiration where all the bad things were consumed and only the good remains. This unblocked the pores and supposedly made the rock "Like New". Now folks, when I order LR I usually like LR that has been around a bit. I want rock loaded with all the tiny critters that make LR true LR. Cooking rock will have the opposite effect. Endogenous respiration theory was discarded over 60 years ago when it was proven not to work in waste processing plants. It was widely studied and it plain doesn't work.

In last weeks addition to this thread I started with Dr. No's $1,000,000 tank. Many, many of the problems with a DSB can be traced to a few things. The bed is not deep enough, it is not of the correct texture and it is not seeded with true LS or enough of it. Often it is the cost of Live Sand that is the major problem with setting up a successful reef. You don’t need a million bucks but then it can’t hurt either.

Next time I'll explain why a DSB is still best for the beginner.

[Konadog]

Originally posted by WaterKeeper
The bare bottom crowd has yet to jump in so in all fairness I will give you the link to Starboard Reef (sorry about the missing pics). This is the thread that really started the BB craze here on RC.

Oh Oh Oh, can I be first!

Lot's of good info here Tom, so let me get to the point (if I have one),
I ran a successful 100 gallon SPS tank for years with old rock, DSB, and a not so great skimmer. I did have my occasional problems (cyano, algae, etc....) but could almost always trace the problem back to something I forgot to do. Yes, maintenance, water testing, pump cleaning, bulb changing, anything or everything, it was usually something I did, not some mysterious unexplained issue.

"So why did you change?" you ask.

Well, I upgraded my tank to a whopping 225 gallon and decided to give the new methods a try. While painting the house, I sold my old tank and livestock, and put my rock in dark tub's and set them in my garage to "cook". Well let me tell you I was surprised to see how much "gunk" came out of the rock over the next few months! Stuff that I usually don't even want to see in my skimmer was on the bottom of the tub's. Long story short, the rock must be cleaner than it started, and yes, I did loose "some" of the life that was on the rock, but not all. Coralline faded, but didn't disappear, some sponges died off, while others made it thru just fine. Some worms, and other crepy crawlers made it, but more did not than survived. I also decided to go BB (well, rubble bottom, but that's another thread) with my new tank, why? I felt that it would make things easier to clean, and less opportunities to scratch the tank.

The tank is only a few months old, so I cannot compare the old system to the new as of yet as to which one is better so........

I can say that I can see some advantages, and disadvantages to all mythology. It takes some time to get use to looking at a tank without sand (why I went rubble bottom) Flow can become an issue with some sand, where BB tanks won't. BB easier to clean, I don't have to be careful as to what I suck up. If it's on the bottom, it's likely to be crap! The down side is, if I forget, or get lazy and don't clean, it's back to the same problems (see above), it all points back to me!


Now my point, I would spend more time worrying about water quality and stability than I would arguing about if BB, DSB, or Rubble bottoms are better. I think rock cooking is a good thing for very old rock, kind of a way to re-cycle LR. Keep up on your maintenance and what ever you use, will likely work just fine!

Originally posted by Paul B
I'm not going anywhere near this one.

You know you want to!

[doox00]

great read, look forward to the next installment.

[WaterKeeper]

Ken,

Thanks for the input. That is the type of stuff I was looking for and I really like it when experienced reefers chime in on these threads. Thanks again and Paul already had his chance to talk about Reverse flow UGF so he better not claim he switched to running a BB or his input will be suspect.

I do know there is another thread called Bare Bottom Lend Me an Ear that I guess after he switched made the thread starter cut off his ear.

You see you BB fans, if you won't do it I'll find the BB support threads myself.

There was also a Bob Toonen article in an on-line Mag, that I shouldn't mention , Bed Comparisons that didn't help the BB folks cause very much. However, it was a very limited study so I wouldn't draw to much of a conclusion from it.

If you are catching where I'm going you have probably figured out that I'm not against BB, I just think a DSB is the best way for a neophyte to go.