Quote:
Originally Posted by Beverly
I don't know what you mean by consume. The sandbed will have nitrifying bacteria, but you will still be left with nitrate and phosphate as a result. At least, this is the way I understand the process.
If you remove the detritus, you remove the resulting nitrate and phosphate - unless you have chemicals that do that for you. I'm not up on biopellets or those things, but I do have elbow grease and don't mind getting my hands wet 
Video I shot this morning Detritus the Day After Mid-Week Detritus Export. As you will see, there is still detritus in the tank. It only really clears up after I siphon it out during a 20% water change - only to begin reappearing again that night. |
By consume, I mean "eaten" by the nitrogen cycle. In other words, you would have less visible detritus as in your video. Instead it would be trapped and consumed by the bacteria in the sand. I can see there would be a limit as to how much the sand can consume, and detritus will become visible if there is too much.
Before I was using bio pellets, my tank was a real mess with detritus and algae covering my live rock and sand. My nitrates went as high as 100 ppm (now less than 20). I had to frequently scrub my rock with a tooth brush, just to try and release more detritus into the water where the flow could move it to my sump with the filter sock and skimmer.
But after I dosed with MB7 and bio pellets, the visible detritus all but disappeared, and I stopped scrubbing my live rock. I still vacuumed the sand bed. But gradually my rocks became clean and shiny with coralline, and the nuisance algae all disappeared. So that's why I think that beneficial bacteria (which need a surface) have a lot to do with a clean tank.