miracle mud

[jimdogg187]

i just put some mm in my refugium with some chaetomorpha. i have heard that anaerobic bacteria grows best when the mm is not moved around. is this true? i placed a hermit crab in the fuge and when it moves around, it stirs up the surface of the mud. not too bad, but it leaves tracks and sifts through the mud scavaging for food. so my other question is, is this too much movement on the surface of the mud for a useful amount of anaerobic bacteria to grow? jim.

 

[Navarre]

This should not cause a problem. However, what i did to avoid this is to add a small layer of Aragonite sand over the Mud. THis keeps the mud in position and gives excellant surface area for pods, hermits and worms etc to crawl over.

In my sump i have 2 layers of Mud and 2 layers of sand. each layer is roughly .5 to 1 inch deep. After a few months the layers will begin to mege together as tiny life burrows through it. You dont have to follow this example of course as i feel that the bacteria will not suffer that much from the crabs movment.

 

[Def]

Navarre, so you have an inch of sand on top of your miracle mud?

That's interesting - I was under the impression that the MM had to be "on its own" to be used to best effect...

Do they mix together? And if so, what do you do about cleaning/replacing etc?

 

[Navarre]

The layers dont make any diference at all to the water (at least i cannot detect this). I have only had this mud running since may so i have not needed to make a change yet. Wen it does coe to make a change i will simply remove about a 3rd at a time and replce both sand and mud. this can be done fairly easy by using a small temporary partition whilst removing the mud.

The layers remain defined to begin with but as life enters the sump they will burroow into it and after a whilt it all gets mixed up anyway.. so some of hte mud will be at the surface and some underneath.. the water flow is slow through the sump and water passes through the entire layer of mud/sand fairly well. so im sure that the muds abilities are not penalised in using this method.

I was going to do the same as you and have only mud in the sump until i saw a shop in Lancashire that had it in layers. This tank had been running for just over a year when i saw it and it looks fantastic!

 

[SWMWTHDAFISHES]

Navarre, I just want to be sure that I am understanding exactly how yours is set up. From the bottom up, you have a layer of miracle mud, layer of sand, another layer of mm, then a 2nd layer of sand? Cool

 

[Def]

Navarre, that's interesting. So I'll ask SwimWithDaFish's question as well, and also:

How much MM do you have? Do you have more MM in the sump because you have 2 layers with 2 layers of sand? Or do you have the same amount of MM that you'd have if you didn't have the sand...

Uh, that is: if you only used MM in your sump, you (hypothetically) need 2 buckets. Do you have 2 buckets split in two by sand, or do you have 4 buckets *because* you put sand in between the layers?

Hope that makes sense....?

 

[Navarre]

I have a 30 gallon sump and i used 2 buckets in the tank. Each layer "was" roughly .5 to 1 inch deep. of course, over time this has been mixed up and now ther is a more even distribution of both sand and mud. Seems to work well for me.