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Unread 03/17/2016, 06:49 PM   #3367
bertoni
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Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Mountain View, CA, USA
Posts: 88,616
A lot of the food will end up in the water column eventually, possibly as "output" from various animals. Some of that will be removed by the skimmer or incorporated into algae that's exported (if any algae trimming is done). The rest will become mineralized nutrients like nitrate and phosphate. The percentage will vary from tank to tank.

I'm not sure how much filtration the sandbed actually performs. That also will vary from system to system, but a number of people have removed sandbags and not noticed much difference in the water parameters. Likewise, Randy added a macro algae refugium and saw his sandbed seem to reduce its production of nitrogen or oxygen, or both.


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