pleinum

[daugherty]

what is everybody's idea about pleniums(sp) are the good to have or not?
i was thinking about implimenting one but thought i would ask about them first.

 

[reeffreak]

I'm not a fan of any kind of DSB in the main display tank.Because of the possibility of crashing years down the road,they displace way to much water and they look just plain ugly.

I messed with the plenum(Jaubert method) in the 90's.I didn't get any benefits except very fast coralline growth.I set it up exactly the way it was suppose to be.Different size grains of sand,mesh over eggrate with a void area below the mesh.I even ran pvc pipe and powerheads for a month to get all the trapped air from under the mesh than cap the pipe.

IME,it's possible the plenum works well but there is absolutely no room for error.If you really want a DSB than do 5-6'' of sugar size sand or smaller like the oolitic sand.Still,I prefer my remote DSB away from the display like in a refugium or another tank,container.

.......waiting for a long-winded comment from Fatman.

 

[fatman]

:bounce:I really have never found a substantial enough benefit for choosing a plenum over a sugar sand deep sand bed. I do find fault in a deep bed with the larger grain sizes recommended for plenum beds. I use a mix of sand at 80 percent between 0.1 and 0.5 mm and 20 percent between 0.5 and 1.0 mm. If it is not available in these sizes I have easy access to rock crushing equipment as there are a lot of assay labs in Alaska due to the many gold holding properties and active gold mines. Detritus buildup problems are evident with plenum beds that are not years mature. I have never had a DSB crash, but the longest I have had one running continuos is just over 8 years, and it is still in operation. Not much of the original sand is probably left though as 3.5 times as much sand has been added to the bed as what started out in the bed. That is a lot of dissolved sand. There were always water changes done on the tank, but the only supplements have been Kalkwasser. It is a 120 gallon SPS tank with a 55 gallon refugium/sump. For its first 3 years it was a mixed stoney coral tank. It is a mature enough bed system that you could throw easily through a half ounce of flake food in it at one time and never see a spike in ammonia, nitrite or nitrate. There is less than 80 pounds of live rock in the tank, but there is a deep sand bed in the refugium/sump also (no live rock in refugium/sump).:^:

 

[Alexander]

seems like they are always personal preference. there are some advantages, but never seemed to have been something worth the trouble to me. I know hawks has one on his tank... but he will probably not chime in due to his lack of internet connection lately