Need some Help Substrate

R

Ringwood

AC Members
Mar 29, 2005
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Ringwood, England
I am in process of building my first Marine Tank for fish and corals, converting Trigon350 to Marine. I have just finished casting all the reef look-alike rocks! (Created using cement/plaster of paris/Aragalive/Caribsea Seafloor(Grade Reef)). Refitted/replaced the in hood lights in the process of cutting Plexiglas panel to cover top(lots of vent holes).

The filters and numerous pumps are circulating/moving the water, the salt has been added for about two weeks.

But I am undecided about the substrate I should be using, thinking about using Crushed Coral layered with large gain sand something like Caribsea Seafloor(Grade Reef), about 2" 5cm deep in total?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Mike :help:
 
there are many ideas about this. some people like me like bare bottom. This way you can remove detrius easily. DSB are good. Im setting up a 90 and im going with a shallow sandbed. about 2-3inchs. IMO crushed coral isnt a good substrate. layered might be alirght. i would like to have half a inch of crushed oyster shell then 2 inchs of southdown.
 
Just found this

Quote: (Nathan Cope)

Live sand is relatively new in the marine aquarium hobby and became popular when it was discovered that, not only do the bacteria in live sand nitrify, they can also de-nitrify under the right conditions. That is, live sand converts NO3 to nitrogen (N2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) gas which then bubbles off into the atmosphere. Live sand has been touted as the simplest and most natural method of reducing nitrates in marine aquaria. One method of employing live sand is often called the natural nitrate reduction or NNR method.

How does this work? Well, if the layer of sand is the correct thickness (around 50-70mm), the bottom layers will become anoxic. This means that the oxygen levels are low, usually around 1ppm. To simplify the process, under anoxic conditions the bacteria take the oxygen atoms from the NO3 to use for energy conversion and this just leaves behind the N2 and N2O, which bubbles off to the atmosphere. Prior to the discovery of de-nitrification in live sand, it was known that live rock does the same thing within its core but it had not been considered efficient enough to take up the typically large quantities of nitrate in aquariums at that time.

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The only question really now what size sand gains to use.............
 
I have read that if you use cement for rocks you will need to cure it for upto a couple of months as it can cause the PH to go through the roof. I have no experiance with this its just something i read. I gues the only way of proving that is to test the PH???

Glad to see someone else from the Uk on the forums though, good luck mate
 
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