Sand bed questions

[Tazmaniancowboy]

I had about 1-2" of sand bed in my 120gal reef. I assume this would be considered a shallow sand bed correct? I have heard people say anywhere from 1-2 pounds of sand are needed for a deep sand bed. Is there such a thing as Too much sand in a DSB? I will be building a 200gal reef shortly and am in the planning stages now. Was thinking of using 400 lbs of the carib-sea arag sand. Seems like a lot. Is there any advantage in a DSB over a SSB?

Taz

 

[reefsandrotts]

In my 150 (72x18) I had a 4-5" DSB I had about 200 lbs. of substrate.

 

[nismo driver]

i run a shalloe sand bed and im finding its really just deep enough to trap detritus but not deep enough to form the anerobic bacteria zones that deep sand beds provide. i have been doing some reading to figure out how deep to go and seem the general range is 4- 6 inchs going much deep then 6 inchs can lead to build up of gas from teh nutrient break down and if that happens if can be very bad. the other part of the deep sand bed that is very important is a variety of creatures to move the sand around to keep the sand bedd clean and healthy..

 

[boontonbob]

I also had 4-5" for two years which functioned very well. I think I required a little less the four 50lb bags to make it. There is a helpful calculator on the RC to see how much you for a certain level of sand.
http://reefcentral.com/calc/SandBed.php

I currently keep a ssb myself. (.5" to 1.5 ") This is one the topics that I mean to study up to see the latest trends.

 

[DaveK]

Usually with sandbeds, you either want about 4 inches, so it is deep enough to do proper denitrification, or you want just enough to cover the bottom. When you have something in between, it tends to become a dirt trap, yet it's not deep enough to do a lot of denitrification.

I would either slowly build up the sandbed to 4 inches or remove it slowly to get it back to 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. The one exception I can think of is that if you have fish that burrow, you may need to keep a deep sand bed for them.