Adding water volume no sump no drill

[Dburr1014]

Again, this is how we do it without drilling...

 

[smarcuscofer]

You always pump one way and let gravity work in the other direction. So either a sump or a tank above the display. You will not gain any benefit of “more water volume” if the water moving between the systems is not at a significant exchange rate.

It sounds like you are new to reefing. Spend time and money on learning before tryin to reinvent the wheel. If this means you want a bigger tank, then get a bigger tank. Using twine and duct tape to get a ”bigger tank” is going to case you More grief than good.

Not so much new to it just not very successful just one nuisance algae after another can't keep the coral happy so they die know I should be working on good husbandry but even when I thought I was the corals slowly die just trying to add some stability to the water chemistry not trying to reinvent the wheel just had a thought and wondered if any one had tried it with success I've spent allot of time researching and alot of money on skimmer and uv etc the UV was the only thing that ever helped me even if it was only for the dinos that's about the only thing I've done is get rid of dinos traded for reoccurring gha and cyano my ugly stage has been going on for 4 years I keep cleaning it keeps coming back I cut back on feedings and had live stock die just frustrated

 

[BeanAnimal]

You are correct in the fact that small systems are hard to keep stable and leave little room for error.

I suggest starting a thread - short overview of where you have been and what you have tried. What you feed, what you dose, everything. Not long winded and to the point.

Let the community help you.

But, in a nutshell. I would avoid a lot of the "new" ways, carbon dosing, adding N ad P, etc. Keep things simple. Water changes, dosing Alk,Ca,Mg and focus on stability. It is a VERY SMALL system. I am not sure where you gort your rock and sand. But maybe restart with live rock from TBS or try Brandon's "rip clean" process.

ATO - will help.
RO/DI - should be used.
ICP test may not fix the issues but me shed light. Oceamo is the only brand that I would use.
Don't chase numbers - just make sure things stay in range.
Most people really overfeed fish and coral.
A good HIB skimmer or HOB power filter with media can help on a tank that small.
Flow can often be a problem. Make sure that you have enough.

 

[Tired]

Adding another tank worth of water volume will just mean you have double the water volume worth of problems.

1: What water source are you using?
2: Did you start with dry or (proper, oceanic) live rock?
3: Have you dosed any chemicals to try to kill the algae?
4: What are your typical nutrient levels?
5: How often do you do a water change, and how much?
6: What fish do you have?

 

[sfin52]

This sounds like a good idea but how will you balance water in to water out? Might have some overflow problems.

Above tank sump may be the easiest way.

 

[sfin52]

Could you use a dose pump to move water from your tank to say a different tank or plastic tote full of rock maybe with a power head and heater to keep it moving and up to temp and then pump it back to the tank for extra water volume and bio filtration just a thought I know everyone will say just get a bigger tank or I should have started bigger than a20 cube I agree at the time I was gung ho on having the reef tank and simply couldn't afford to do what I wanted to spend like 600 on the whole setup not 600 on just lights any who if like hear y'all's thoughts

Above tanks sump.

 

[MnFish1]

It is unclear why you don't just Make a 'cheap sump' - you can use a tote, etc - and put it under your tank - put a pump in it and add an overflow to your tank. A sump does not need to be extremely expensive.

 

[MoshJosh]

Could do an above tanks sump or fuge made out of something you are comfortable drilling like plastic. This will be unsightly and add bubbles to the tanks but can be done.

Give me a minute to see if I can find a picture of my old bucket sump:

 

[smarcuscofer]

Again, this is how we do it without drilling...

Adding another tank worth of water volume will just mean you have double the water volume worth of problems.

1: What water source are you using?
2: Did you start with dry or (proper, oceanic) live rock?
3: Have you dosed any chemicals to try to kill the algae?
4: What are your typical nutrient levels?
5: How often do you do a water change, and how much?
6: What fish do you have?

Rodi
Special grade reef sand
Dry rock cured for 6 months with heater and power head.
Set up the tank and let it run empty for 3 months then add a clown and a couple hermits another 3 months before I add coral

No chemicals I tried gfo once chasing that ultra low phosphate that led to dinos
I add Dr Tim's refresh every now and then l alternate with waste away never at the same time

I tried to keep nitrate under 20 phosphate usually hovered between 3 and 9ppb ALK was usually 8 or 9 I haven't tested them in forever but cal was between 400-450 and mag was around 1300 but it was stable I didn't dose just water change I was using reef crystals but I switched to fritz rpm

Around the 3 year mark after I got the tank wet got frustrated and neglected the tank for a few months so my numbers are out of whack now I'm getting them in order and stable before I try to re stock my nitrates were probably 160
I've been working on getting that down they are in between 20 and 40i tested phosphate 2 weeks ago that was 3ppb

I usually did 2 gallons per week sometimes when I was busy it would be every other week I've been doing 7 per week for 4 weeks to get nitrates down

I started with a clown and a couple hermits wait a couple months add a couple astrea snails couple months add nassarious snail I eventually add a goby I think the clown bullied him away from food and he died then a fire fish same thing I add a couple emerald crabs and a couple more snails and hermits I think I'm getting somewhere cuz my rocks never looked cleaner then my sand and glass started growing algae in mats and very fast I slowed down the feeding and my clown died... Long story short I've never had more than 2 fish in the tank at a time maybe 3 or 4 small snails and hermits at a time and a couple small emerald crabs now I have a hermit and 2 nassarious snail it's allot I know

 

[BeanAnimal]

How much were you feeding?

 

[Tired]

Is the RODI from a device that has the filter regularly changed out?

Hermits don't eat much algae, nassarius snails eat none. You may not have enough cleanup crew to fight the algae.

Those parameters should work fine. That's likely not your problem, meaning more water volume won't help.

A 10gal package of live rock from KP Aquatics or Tampa Bay might be worth a shot. Should bring in plenty of biodiversity to hopefully help get things stable. Adding rock with more algae might seem counterintuitive, but pest algae runs amok on empty spaces, and the best protection against pest algae is to have non-pest algaes already on all your rockwork to compete with it.

Did the clownfish look underweight before it died? There are a lot of pods in any tank that's been up for awhile, so it should have been able to get food other than what you were feeding it, and fish take awhile to starve. That said, reef fish should (with a few exceptions) be fed a minimum of once daily. Overfeeding helps nothing, but underfeeding is worse if the fish have no way to compensate. If you turn out to be feeding too much, reduce the amount, not the frequency.

Were you scrubbing the algae out at all? Scrubbing can set the rock back to blank again, which pest algae loves.

For future reference, getting dry rock cycled well enough with bottled bacteria to stock fish takes about a week. Not several months. Not sure if you had the tank empty for some other reason.

 

[smarcuscofer]

You are correct in the fact that small systems are hard to keep stable and leave little room for error.

I suggest starting a thread - short overview of where you have been and what you have tried. What you feed, what you dose, everything. Not long winded and to the point.

Let the community help you.

But, in a nutshell. I would avoid a lot of the "new" ways, carbon dosing, adding N ad P, etc. Keep things simple. Water changes, dosing Alk,Ca,Mg and focus on stability. It is a VERY SMALL system. I am not sure where you gort your rock and sand. But maybe restart with live rock from TBS or try Brandon's "rip clean" process.

ATO - will help.
RO/DI - should be used.
ICP test may not fix the issues but me shed light. Oceamo is the only brand that I would use.
Don't chase numbers - just make sure things stay in range.
Most people really overfeed fish and coral.
A good HIB skimmer or HOB power filter with media can help on a tank that small.
Flow can often be a problem. Make sure that you have enough.

Rodi
Special grade reef sand
Dry rock cured for 6 months with heater and power head.
Set up the tank and let it run empty for 3 months then add a clown and a couple hermits another 3 months before I add coral

No chemicals I tried gfo once chasing that ultra low phosphate that led to dinos
I add Dr Tim's refresh every now and then l alternate with waste away never at the same time

I tried to keep nitrate under 20 phosphate usually hovered between 3 and 9ppb ALK was usually 8 or 9 I haven't tested them in forever but cal was between 400-450 and mag was around 1300 but it was stable I didn't dose just water change I was using reef crystals but I switched to fritz rpm

Around the 3 year mark after I got the tank wet got frustrated and neglected the tank for a few months so my numbers are out of whack now I'm getting them in order and stable before I try to re stock my nitrates were probably 160
I've been working on getting that down they are in between 20 and 40i tested phosphate 2 weeks ago that was 3ppb

I usually did 2 gallons per week sometimes when I was busy it would be every other week I've been doing 7 per week for 4 weeks to get nitrates down

I started with a clown and a couple hermits wait a couple months add a couple astrea snails couple months add nassarious snail I eventually add a goby I think the clown bullied him away from food and he died then a fire fish same thing I add a couple emerald crabs and a couple more snails and hermits I think I'm getting somewhere cuz my rocks never looked cleaner then my sand and glass started growing algae in mats and very fast I slowed down the feeding and my clown died... Long story short I've never had more than 2 fish in the tank at a time maybe 3 or 4 small snails and hermits at a time and a couple small emerald crabs now I have a hermit and 2 nassarious snail it's allot I know

How much were you feeding?

When I started I over fed like most people I was trying to feed 1 or 2 times a day and feed the corals once a week didn't take long I had to stop spot feeding the corals and then once a day I would do a very small pinch of pellets one day then a quarter cube mysis the next day very small pinch of pe myssis flake the next.... That didn't seem to help with algae so I started feeding in a similar matter every other day didn't help so I cut portions even smaller didn't help then every 3 days didn't help keep in mind this was for 1 clown and small cuc the goby and fire fish were more at the beginning I tried to target feed them a little they ate but the clown made sure he got more they did... My new plan would be to feed mostly frozen mysis with some pellets mixed in every now and then for the extra nutrients I didn't like the frozen because I was cutting the cube into 6 or 8 pieces and using 1 per feeding feeding it just seemed like it was too much to put even half a cube in a time and I'm horrible about forgetting to put the mysis back in the freezer the more frustrated I got i got lazy and used the flake but I tried not to over do it because of nutrient issues... Maybe I didn't feed enough to sustain the bio load

 

[smarcuscofer]

Is the RODI from a device that has the filter regularly changed out?

Hermits don't eat much algae, nassarius snails eat none. You may not have enough cleanup crew to fight the algae.

Those parameters should work fine. That's likely not your problem, meaning more water volume won't help.

A 10gal package of live rock from KP Aquatics or Tampa Bay might be worth a shot. Should bring in plenty of biodiversity to hopefully help get things stable. Adding rock with more algae might seem counterintuitive, but pest algae runs amok on empty spaces, and the best protection against pest algae is to have non-pest algaes already on all your rockwork to compete with it.

Did the clownfish look underweight before it died? There are a lot of pods in any tank that's been up for awhile, so it should have been able to get food other than what you were feeding it, and fish take awhile to starve. That said, reef fish should (with a few exceptions) be fed a minimum of once daily. Overfeeding helps nothing, but underfeeding is worse if the fish have no way to compensate. If you turn out to be feeding too much, reduce the amount, not the frequency.

Were you scrubbing the algae out at all? Scrubbing can set the rock back to blank again, which pest algae loves.

For future reference, getting dry rock cycled well enough with bottled bacteria to stock fish takes about a week. Not several months. Not sure if you had the tank empty for some other reason.

Mostly bad information on the you tube I let the tank run empty until it had pods and hopefully developed a bio film figured it could sustain life at that point he spent allot of time grazing and picking pods at the time it was popular information to spread this is a fast moving hobby in this day and age they don't recommend the long wait as much

 

[FUNGI]

Buy a used FX6, remove all sponges, fill with LR rubble.... I also favor above tank sumps.....

 

[smarcuscofer]

Mostly bad information on the you tube I let the tank run empty until it had pods and hopefully developed a bio film figured it could sustain life at that point he spent allot of time grazing and picking pods at the time it was popular information to spread this is a fast moving hobby in this day and age they don't recommend the long wait as much

The rodi could have been changed morei need a tds meter that's budget friendly the emeralds did a number on the algae I probably didn't feed enough for them to make it after they ate the algae I had a big astrea snail and a couple smaller ones that mowed paths of the algae at a time

 

[FUNGI]

This is mine (but I have 3 FX's) (during build, only 2 shown)

 

[mikey1958]

Wouldn't a adjystable inline valve on one or both lines work?

 

[sfin52]

Wouldn't a adjystable inline valve on one or both lines work?

The rule is do not use pumps to move water to a sump and return water to the the tank.

 

[Boehmtown]

You can always auto water change into another tank with a few dosing pumps.

 

[Tired]

The trouble is getting the water back to the first tank at the same pace it's coming out, to stop the second tank overflowing.

Also, if the issue isn't parameters, more water isn't going to help. And it doesn't seem to be parameters.

Though, TDS testing the RODI is probably a good idea. If it's not working properly, that'll make things way worse, and more of that not-quite-pure water won't help anything either.