mercredi 8 avril 2015

A new little experiment

I'm going to setup a little experiment. I've been reading some threads on here and basically it's stated you cannot cook sand or remove at least some of the P that it may contain. So I'm still gonna try lmao.



The way I'll set it up is to have 3 seperate tests in 3 5g buckets I use for ro/di water storage so they are pretty sterile. I'll test each bucket first (I just made water) for tds and any water containing 1tds or above will not be used

-vacuuming substrate everyday

-vacuuming every other day

-vacuuming once a week

-after each cleaning containers will be topped off to predetermined levels



I'll divide the new aragonite sand I have left (about 10#) into those 3 categories after rinsing as a whole with ro/di water until I see fit



I'll take 1 cup from each and put it in a ziplock bag with ro/di water (or should I use salt water?) and into the great Missouri sun to grow algae for 1 week (or at least 5 sunny days, or should I do this with the extra PC lights I have laying around?) and document the algae growth with pictures



After a time frame we see fit has passed (I'll need help to decide how long this should run) I'll take 1 cup from each sample add ro/di or salt water and back into the sun (or PC lighting) to grow algae again and document with pictures.



Things I still need to decide



-I have byropsis in my 10g tank I can include when I set the samples out to grow algae, should I throw a sample in each bag?

-for the lighting I should probably use PC lighting as a light source control right?

-should I seed each of the 3 tests with 1/4 cup established sand from my aquarium

-should I pull samples each week from each of the 3 tests each week to see if any test is progressively getting better/worse or just do it at the end?

-I cannot control temperature

-what about aeration? Can I just hand agitate the water everyday? I have only 2 air stones and 2 air pumps and have no extra powerheads, I do have air line splitters so it is possible for me to run all 3 buckets off one pump



Anything else you guys can think of?



In the end I just want to prove that you can or cannot cook sand like you can rock since I've seen a lot of talk about it but no action.



I am hoping the bacteria will do their thing and I can remove the bacteria floc and their bound nutrients in a timely manner until a majority of nutrients have been removed leaving me with relatively clean sand. As a final test I will remove the sand from my 10g and replace it with sand from the best experiment and see if I get an algae bloom like I did when I first added sand (although I have doubts since the P level as a whole in the 10g tank is probably higher now)




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