View Single Post
Unread 08/18/2015, 08:21 PM   #1563
34cygni
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2013
Posts: 59
So here's a fun science fact: dinos love sand.

Dinos are found in pretty much any sort of marine sediment, but sand is their favorite. I know people have tried removing sandbeds, and Squidmotron gave us this rather amazing report of his experience adding sand...


Quote:
04/30/2014, 04:11 PM #206
Squidmotron

I just discovered something that is interesting. Since I have never heard this before in relation to dinos I thought I would pass it along.

Today I added about 15 lbs of pink somoa sand (not live) sand to my refugium. I was curious if there was any particular reason the dinos weren't growing much in my refugium and so thought to recreate the environment of the aquarium above. My refugium never had any substrate. Just caulerpa.

Within 4 hours, dino populations exploded. And I mean exploded. Dinos rose to much larger than normal heights in their usual spots and started covering all the rocks. The substrate began literally bubbling as new dinos formed (even in tank areas where I did not add sand).

(and yes, these are not diatoms -- as you might expect from the addition of sand -- although I wonder if there are both present)
Has anyone tried rejiggering their system so that there's no sand anywhere except in a cryptic tank or a cryptic remote deep sand bed? I'm wondering what happens to mixotrophic dinos and their cysts when the only sand they have access to is dark and full of hungry heterotrophs... And filter feeders like cryptic zones. Having some of them around couldn't hurt.

Like I said, I've been thinking about sand.


34cygni is offline   Reply With Quote