fluidized bed filter questions

Howdy folks! Sorry I haven't posted in a while. My wife and I are movingv to a new place.

I have an 80 gallon tank I'm putting in the new pad. And a 30g sump to go with it.

Two questions:

I want to use an FBF along with some chaeto, and a DSB to help me cut down on LR.

First I want to know if this is feasable. And also, is it true that 1lb FBF media (sand) can handle my 110g (in total)?

Please elaborate. I want to hear your experiences and advice.

 

No takers?

Does anyone have evperience with Fluidized Bed Filters?

 

I don't know much, but can't they be nitrate traps?

 

Yes, they are extremely effective nitrification filters. They provide an enourmous amount of surface area for nitrifying bacteria. They are not really nitrate traps, they just do not perform any denitrification. The problem with cheato as a sole means of denitrificaion is, it just isn't that effective compared to liverock. This is because cheato can be fairly sensitive to nutrients imbalances and deficiencies whereas bacteria isn't as much. To replace any significant amount of liverock with chaeto, you would need a really big sump, bigger than your display, full of chaeto. I would tend to say a Deep Sand Bed would be a fine by itself as long as you have some LR and just skip the fluidized bed filter.

 

Thanks for replying guys. The DSB I'm planning will be both in the DT and the sump. My budget is slim so I'm open to any suggestions on nitrate removal.

 

Well, except that live rock does nothing with Nitrates.

Chaeto isn't a denitrifier either, it's an export of nitrates and still the best export method is water changes. There are plenty of methods to handle nitrate reduction, including export and denitrification processes, but I'm not sure why the OP is against live rock in the first place.

Jeff

 

Interesting do you have a source for that?


Facultative anaerobic denitrification is well established in the scientific literature. There has always been a small group of individuals on the forums questioning whether or not not this actually occurred in LR, however, the evidence for such occurrence far exceeds the evidence against. There is a trove of material to suggest this does occur in LR and none that I am aware of, to suggest it doesn't.

For example, see Yeun et al. (2009).

Shyan Yuen, Seitaro S. Yamazaki, Takashi Nakamura, Gaku Tokuda,
Hideo Yamasaki, Effects of live rock on the reef-building coral
Acropora digitifera culturedcultured with high levels of nitrogenous
compounds, Aquacultural Engineering, Volume 41, Issue 1,
July 2009, Pages 35-43, ISSN 0144-8609, DOI: 10.1016
Abstract

Reef-building corals are sensitive to excessive nitrogenous (N) compounds. To maintain levels of inorganic nitrogenous compounds low in coral aquaria, various technologies, mechanical, chemical and biological, have been applied. As one of the biological techniques, “live rock,” which can be defined as a dead coral skeleton covered with crustose coralline algae (CCA), has long been applied for coral aquaria. Until recently, however, there has been little evidence for the effectiveness of live rock in removal of N compounds from coral aquaria. Demonstrating comparative experiments with live rocks, here we report that the live rock is capable of removing N compounds and reduces the mortality of reef-building coral. We cultured the reef-building coral Acropora digitifera with the sea cucumber Holothuria atra as a natural nitrogen producer. H. atra increased the concentration of the inorganic N compounds (NH4+, NO3− and NO2−) that resulted in high coral mortality. The presence of the live rock remarkably reduced the concentrations and sustained a high coral photosynthetic activity. We detected the functional genes amoA and nirS within the live rock, suggesting the occurrence of both nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria. These results support the idea that “live rock” is an effective biofilter that can maintain water quality suitable for reef-building corals.