When I first started posting in 2002 on other forums I was flamed/banned and so on because 1) I did not trust DSB, and 2) emphasized macro algaes.

Seems that DSBs were all the fad.

Take a look at this thread:

Total Destruction from Deep sand bed!!! - Reef Central Online Community

perhaps that is why we now have more emphasis on refugiums/macro algaes and so on.

But then perhaps you have to be old guys like me and Paul_b to have seen fads come and go over the years.


What you guys think?


and gals also.

my .02

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fw leiden since 1979, fo salt since 1979, mixed reef 55g 2002-2009. Strong emphasis on the tank taking care of itself. Balanced with plant life, no water changes, tap water, no filters in FW. Only dosing calcium, alk, mag in marine reef tanks. http://www.aquariumforum.com/f15/my-...ods-26410.html
recent tanks (till 2009) 7 years- 10g FW leiden 7 yrs, 55g mixed reef 7, 2 yrs, 20g FW leiden, 10 g fw leiden , 29g mixed reef, current tank 55g leiden

I won't lie DSB is something I have considered a few times, but it's 1 of those things if you get it right your laughing but in that link it seems the poor chap didn't, Macro Algae is good I just found it kept having bits fall off and it ended up in my wavemaker, thinking back I could have stuck it in a mesh bag or something to keep it all locked in, my sand bed is about 2 inch deep or a little less so I can get my rocks on the bottom touching the glass without them being buried, a lot of folks say 1 inch or even less but I like the look of the 2 inch, DSB's also throw up the problem of something burying underneath the rock and making it all fall over and smash the tank, I think most folks have a 30 to 50 gallon tank and I wouldn't look forward to having to clean that up.

I used Vodka for a while before I had to move house and at week 7 of dosing I did start to see my nitrates drop, I never seen anything harmful happening to anything in the tank (doesn't mean there wasn't anything I just didn't notice anything different) either.

It wasn't the sand bed that caused the problem, it was disturbing the sand bed by digging it up and exposing the anaerbic bacteria that caused it. My current 7+ year old 100G reef system has 330 lbs of Southdown, 5-6" average depth that has never been disturbed to any extent and my nitrates and phosphates are undetectable.

Why we like to mess is beyond me? Install it, provide a good CUC like nassarius snails and leave it alone and let it do its thing.

If you want to donate a cup of live sand now and then, scoop it from the top portion where the mini brittle stars, spaghetti worms and other critters as well as the aerobic and some anoxic bacterias reside, don't disturb down deep.

Fad or not, DSBs work... but you have to follow a few rules. Looking over that thread, it's pretty obvious the cardinal rule of "Don't Dig Deep" was broken. Doesn't matter what you do... if you don't understand the reasoning of what you're doing, you're walking a dangerous path. The poster in that thread didn't even know what GFO was, so I'm thinking staying in tune with what is going on in the hobby isn't a major priority.

As I said in my post if you get it right you are laughing but get it wrong and your not, but if you are doing a DSB you really need to read up a bit on it, not looking at website after website just a quick google and a few that pop up for some info and opinions.

I'm always messing with my tank, for some reason that rock never seems to sit the way I like so it really puts me off a DSB, and a few times Ive had to take a crap load of rock out to get a fish.

but all that aside no matter where you go on the net everyone will say the same thing about DSB's and that is don't disturb it, if I did decide to go the DSB (knowing me I prob will do it 1 day despite me saying here I wouldn't) I would have egg-crate sitting about 2 inch down that way nothing will fall below, it seems the poor chap failed to follow the first golden rule of DSB's.

So far everybody has hit on the most important thing about a DSB leave it alone. The sand bed in my reef tank is pretty deep, but I have a lot of animals in the sand as well starting with two Engineer Gobies about 8-10 inches each a sand start and a horse shoe crab and loads of nassarius snails. So my sand is always moving. On the other hand I had a friend a few years back with a DSB that sat for about 5 years, pulled up one rock and just about killed everything in the tank. There are so many ways to do this hobby. Some things that work for others may not work for you and vice versa. Until we grow gills we are all just guessing at this thing, but there are for the most part proven methods that work better then others.

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