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| Berlin Method Overview Parts Sourced from The Reef Aquarium, Volume 1, J. Charles Delbeek and Julian Sprung The modern "Berlin method" of aquarium keeping began with the work of Peter Wilkens and the marine aquarium club in Berlin. Although these systems are called natural systems, they do differ from those described by Eng (1961) and Emmens (1986) by incorporating protein skimmers in their design. 
This site is dedicated to sharing with others my efforts to create a successful reef tank based on the Berlin method. |
it’s as simple as this. Replace the live rock with a Jaubert’s Plenum or technically an undergravel plate with large enough volume plus some floss that’s removed daily such as we had with corner box filters and add kalk and you have the same end game. Although my approach is passing water though a deep bed of gravel since I understand the removal of oxygen during nitrification is how we get to a point of potential denitrification. However, carbon dosing has literally eliminated the need for that. No anoxic chamber needed. Still trying to figure exactly how that is but I know it works first hand.
Skimmer was efficient at removing organics before they converted to ammonia. Seachem Purigen accomplishes that to some extent. Requires less maintenance and can be recharged. Yet carbon dosing solves that as well.
If memory serves me right those live rocks were cured (don’t recall many if any getting direct wet air shipments from the source or stores selling out as fast as they arrived) until mostly the bacteria survived. Usually sponges too and those dreaded mantis although I thought they were cool. I believe the key was the diversification of bacteria. Biome testing today I think tries to assist that and perhaps adding bacterial additives from different sources helps somewhat accomplish that. What I’ve done. Perhaps one day I’ll send a test out to see how close I’ve come or not.
Don’t recall any discussions about aeration qualities of skimmers back then but could just be I missed that point. Still valid. Some still run their skimmers just for that value yet perhaps an air stone might solve some of that.
Although algal scrubbers mentioned in the copy/paste I provided. I don’t recall them being considered inclusive. Recall little talk about algal scrubbers at the LFS and mostly advertisements in the magazines. No internet then. Perhaps it would have been discussed more often.
Although kalk was one component that had nothing to do with mechanical filtration assisting biological. Just perhaps something discovered around the same time and somehow linked together. Skimmer/live rock solved filtration for any saltwater tank and kalk solved for keeping that which consumed its components. Softies didn’t need kalk.
I could be wrong but if I were to design a system that decomposed organics into nitrogen gas then I’d effectively replace the biological component of the Berlin Method. DSB were supposed to accomplish that but required little disturbance by other than by benthic creatures. Don’t recall talk of bacteria diversification but perhaps that would have helped.
My solution to mimicking the essence of the Berlin Method is to run water through a large long path of various size gravel and either utilize carbon dosing to supplement the removal of nitrates or a refugium. Was originally headed in the path of gravel to refugium until I discovered carbon dosing but then learned tank co2 equalized with atmospheric co2 (I’m always learning and have to thank Randy for this one) which carbon dosing doesn’t solve and now back to gravel and a refugium. Perhaps I’ll call it Hybrid Berlin Adey Method although perhaps we just call it what it was coined in the 60s. The Natural Method
