Modular Live Sand System Possible?

The concept of a modular live sand system has crossed my mind on
occassion, and I was interested in feedback from the NG. It seems
possible to develop a modular system for live sand (or live rock for
that matter) in which the LS or LR is placed in a box (perhaps half
full with the substrate and half sal****er). The box would have tube
fittings on either end to allow quick connect and disconnect into a
circulating sal****er circuit. New boxes would be placed in circuit
with mature boxes to allow maturation of the LS and or LR prior to
sale. The potential advantages of such a system might be the ability
to possibly achieve a mature reef system with a mature nitrogen cycle
in a relatively short period of time. Such a system does not require
the disturbance of mature LR/LS system, which potentially releases
loads of dead/decaying matter, and subsequent spike in ammonia,
nitrites/nitrates, etc., which commonly occurs when LR/LS is shipped
or purchased from a LFS. Further since the LR/LS is not disturbed
completely, conceivably such boxes may be able to be shipped overnight
and plugged into a new reef system and have a much shorter cycle than
the current methods allow. Even if such boxes would not offer
benefits via an overnight shipping scenario, I do not see why local
LFS could not offer such items to dramatically reduce the cycling time
of a new reef system. Additional benefits may apply to long-term reef
systems experiencing "old reefers syndrome" in which the ability of
the system to further cycle wastes is saturated, exhausted or
overwhelmed.

Interesting concept, I have just done similar with my 2 tanks, one was
cycling, and the other tank had the live rocks toing what the do, the new
tank was taking too long and the level were very bad, I put one live rock in
the tank for 3 days, after that the levels all reached 0. But I think the
transfer of bacteria is actualy going to take much longer then a few hours
or a few days., it seems having the rock there just helps to keep the water
in check but the bacteria levels in the main tank will still have to grow at
their normal rate.

That problem could be solved by having a large master module/box, or even
multiple master modules, that do not get sold. The master module would have
mature LR/LS that would be supporting mature colonies of bacteria. An
occasional transfer of LR/LS between an uncycled module and the master,
would also allow addtional invert migration. This could allow the entire
system to refresh itself constanly. I dont know what kind of scale you are
looking at for each module, but the size and amount of filtration would be
quite an endevour. The intial cost might be high, but there are ways around
it. One way to save on cost is if you can build your own skimmers, you could
set one up for each module.

Just a thought.


"skozzy" wrote in message
...
Interesting concept, I have just done similar with my 2 tanks, one was
cycling, and the other tank had the live rocks toing what the do, the new
tank was taking too long and the level were very bad, I put one live rock
in
the tank for 3 days, after that the levels all reached 0. But I think the
transfer of bacteria is actualy going to take much longer then a few hours
or a few days., it seems having the rock there just helps to keep the
water
in check but the bacteria levels in the main tank will still have to grow
at
their normal rate.