Benefit of deep sand bed in frag tank

[kriskristofferzen]

I'm in process of getting my 45 deep blue frag tank. My buddy at LFS was telling me

To try the DSB technique in my soon to be 40 breeder sump. I have read at some point there is phosphate leaching after a period of time is this verifiable? I have my skimmer and live rock which I was going to use and possibly make a 10 gallon fuge in the sump with some macro algae. Either that or skip the fuge and use the skimmer part time and employ an ATS in the sump with live rock. After my conversation though yesterday I'm more confused as he was telling me he has done like one water change on his system in the last year, he has a 5 inch in tank sand bed.

Ideas and experiences please!

[MikeTR]

I can't really see any benefit to having a DSB in a frag tank. You should have minimal bioload to begin with so nitrates shouldn't be an issue. Use the live rock to get the cycle going and a fuge to soak up what little nitrates and phosphates may appear later on.

[kriskristofferzen]

thank you for the info! I'll keep it in mind. I prob will just do a refugium with lots of macro algae and some extra live rock in sump.

[hey]

I don't see a benefit to dsb's at all. Time bombs or accidently disruption crashes are all that come to mind.

[Formula462]

I have a VERY deep sand bed in my frag tank sump, only on one side though. That tank took a while to act right, but it was mainly the lighting kept getting effed with. Nowadays with its icecap250w halides, it's doing awesome.colors up Acros great. Don't know if I'd do the sand bed quite as deep next time, but I do have BUKUS of pods and actually have a recurring cycle of mysis shrimp. They reproduce and I can see the different generations.

[Bill Nye]

Sand is the devil. Bare bottom for life. DSBs seem to be more trouble than they are worth but some people swear by them. I would go BB in a frag tank although I may be biased since every tank I've had in the past 5 years hasn't had sand...