Deep sand bed question

[barderer]

Guys and Gals,

I am going to be setting up a frag tank a la mucho basico where I am going to partition approximately 1/4 of the tank off with a divider and drill flow slots in the front of the divider(tank front) 6" above the tank floor. My plan is to have a DSB in the divider section 6" deep then the flow holes in the front above the bed. E.G. flow will go over the top of the bed toward the back of the tank up into a hang on filter then dumped back on the other side of the partition and blown around with a power head. Thus leaving the main tank area Just Plain Glass for fragging. The man reason for this design is its all using junk I already have. Question is. Does this meet the flow requirements for the DSB to function? What are the requirements?

[Ping]

What will be the length and width of the sandbed. To achieve proper advection with a DSB the energy of the water needs to colide with a barrier, thus creating areas of higher and lower pressure at different areas of the surface. The power head will provide this for you.

[barderer]

I'd imagine it would be about 6"x13"x6". Only filtering coral frags and maybe one QT fish at times.

[Ping]

That is a really small DSB. It may be more trouble than its worth. Miracle mud in this area would be "way" more beneficial, but "way" more expensive, but worth it in my opinion, because of benefits recieved from a smaller area.

How much total system volume?

[ErikH]

Peter, what would be ideal for a small DSB (LxW)? Is there a way to figure how big of a DSB you need in comparison to tank size or bioload? The info on the web is fairly convoluted, and any insight you could provide would be greatly valued!

(taggin' along)

[Ping]

No one, Sprung, Delbeek, Jaubert, etc has conducted a true study on Remote Deep Sand Bed (RDSB) size to total system water volume ratio. Even Leng Sy's Miracle mud system reccomends a fairly larger fooprint per total system gallons.

http://www.ecosystemaquarium.com/products/miracle-mudr/setup-instructions.html

When the guy on Reef Central came up with the 5 gallon bucket system, this was the first time someone with high nitrates was able to lower them with a smaller deep sandbed.

Before this idea came about, most people effectively using a RDSB were using standard sized tanks usually 55g or larger for their RDSB. Or they were using a large portion of their sump, built especially for a RDSB, usually the footprint of a 10 gallon tank or larger.

I would speculate that most people today use a remote shallow sand bed with vegatation culturing to lower nitrates and phosphates.