Miracle mud,deep sand beds and plenum style bio filtering.

The workings of a deep sand bed connected with life forms, like in the display tank or refuge are as follows.

The top 15 mil is aerobic, then from there down to the base is anaerobic, bacteria existing in low to no oxygen and relying on the two atoms of oxygen they extract from the nitrate atoms to exist there that are of 1 part nitrogen and two parts oxygen, nitrogen is left over so it’s been called the nitrogen cycle since I started in the hobby and for a while now some call it the nitrite cycle.

As time goes on the base becomes infested and expands up wards with bacteria that results in hydrogen sulphide, this as it is expelled makes contact with the waters oxygen and is instantly converted to sulfur.

This is at fluctuating levels and the results are very clear guys, salt and sulfur have been used to kill off bacteria and other micro organisms for a very long time and you are using these in ways that is making your deep sand beds unbalanced and all over the place after some years.

Some bacteria are very commofortable with sulphur but not all the ones we rely on.
They even think sulphur accounted for a large die off on the planet a long time ago before human’s time here and the smell of the ocean is just that, sulphur!

So the ocean is the largest of sulfur produces on the planet, unless a volcano goes off,lol.

Sulphur, dead bacteria to ammonia resulting in PH imbalance, the next day balance is regained, the next week dead bacteria ammonia with PH imbalance and on and on!

I found this on a club testing day in the early 90s that found high levels of sulphur in those ones including mine that we tested, along with the findings against bacteria running the nitrite to nitrate part of the cycle.

Everything that is in your water gets into your fish due to their life being dependant on drinking enormous amounts of the water they live in, your deep sand bed with out on going propping up adds more substances to their drinking water.

Clean deep sand beds do wonderful things and over all it really doesn’t matter, I had to learn the hard way as many others will and really anything carries out some form of bio work in a marine aquarium, not always obvious or obviously good or bad until a long time has been spent on the hobby from information gathered from ocean activities.