Baby Clownfish vs Live Rock

[sbash]

Hi Everybody,

I am not breeding clownfish, but I am getting clowns in from a breeder. My problem is managing ammonia when I get 100 babies in. I had a few split systems from when I was working with other species of fish (essentially a bunch of cycled QT tanks). I see a lot of ammonia creep (0.25 to 0.5), and I can manage it with prime, but I still lose some fish.

My plan is to merge all the tanks and build one big system. My question is, how much live rock do I need to 1-200 juvenile clowns? They range from 1"-1.5", all are under a year old.

Thanks!

 

[gioNVA]

Instead of live rock, have you looked at other filtration methods such as a fluidized sand filter or a k1 kaldness filter as alternatives? You will most likely need a lot of live rock and at that point, space becomes an issue. Once you've dealt with ammonia, you will probably need to look at ways to handle nitrates.

 

[shred5]

How small are they?
What age?

 

[starypotter]

How big is the system you're putting them in? Is there anything else in that system where you'd be able to add ammonia consistently until a day or two before you get the fish so that you've got the system used to handling so much ammonia?

 

[sbash]

Instead of live rock, have you looked at other filtration methods such as a fluidized sand filter or a k1 kaldness filter as alternatives? You will most likely need a lot of live rock and at that point, space becomes an issue. Once you've dealt with ammonia, you will probably need to look at ways to handle nitrates.

I'll look into those options, thanks... I do have lots of rock and lots of space though... Worse case I could drag a 55 gallon over and fill it with rock (it is already full of rock, but about 15 feet away)...

How small are they?
What age?

As stated: "They range from 1"-1.5", all are under a year old"

How big is the system you're putting them in? Is there anything else in that system where you'd be able to add ammonia consistently until a day or two before you get the fish so that you've got the system used to handling so much ammonia?

Right now, I'll have 70 gallons in total water volume. This includes two 20G long, a 10G and about a 20 gallon tub full of rock (as the sump, essentially). I do know that less than 1/3 of the rock in the tub was able to hold stable with about 50 fish in it for a few weeks.

I was doing that for the individual systems, I had the 20 gallon longs able to process 3ml of ammonia in 24 hours. Which is pretty darn good I think. With roughly 18 gallons of water in the tank, 1ml should be about 14ppm (I think, lol)...

The big problem is that one will die here and there, and in the individual tanks, the chemistry just went all wacky once the first one died. The shipping is also brutal, I will lose a couple in the first 24 hours undoubtedly. That first loss causes a cascading effect and it becomes hard to manage.

 

[sbash]

Alright, so added 5ml of ammonia to my 20 gallon sump filled with live rock (66ppm of ammonia). 24 hours later it is at most at 1ppm left; I'll test again in the morning. Also, hopefully by EOD tomorrow I'll have a bunch of the tanks plumbed together.

At that point I'll repeat the same 5ml test until it hits zero in 24 hours (then move up by 1ml a day), if that doesn't happen in the next few days, I'll add more rock.

 

[James Hopkins]

can we see and update on the tanks with pics?

 

[sbash]

can we see and update on the tanks with pics?

Good idea, I cycled the fluidic sand filter and with the rocks it was able to process 9ml of ammonia in the full system (about 50 gallons total volume), which calculates to about 49ppm, in 24 hours.

Adding the clowns, I have about 150 of them in the system as seen here:

It is a bit of a mess, but this is just a proof of concept and I'll be moving everything around next month anyway. Basically, the return pump pumps up to the top 20 long, and overflows down to the next level into the other 20 long and the 10 gallon. The permanent configuration will be two 20 longs on top, overflowing to two 20 longs on the second level, and potentially into a barracks built out of 10 gallon tanks. The 1" bulkhead is too big for a 10 gallon, so I'll do 2 x 3/4" next time and see how that goes.

I haven't had any deaths, so I can't say how the system will process that situation. However, I may have mentioned before that I suspect the deaths were related to the ammonia spike and causing a deadly cascading reaction.

For the filter tub:

You can see the Phosban 150 reactor doing its thing, along with a bunch of live rock. Once again, this is a POC, so the tubing is all messy.

I also added another reactor, it was cheap and came with a pump (the Aquatop MR-20), but the pump is not really strong enough, so the Phosban 150 with an MJ1200 is the way to go for the next one. I wanted a cycled spare on hand in case I needed to hook it onto the stand alone 30 gallon, which seen on the right hand side of the first picture.

This is pretty neat stuff, I'll use the backup as a test platform later on. I will also want a UPS on each filter to buy some time before I can fire up the generator. All in all, with the UPS, it will cost about the same as live rock, maybe a little less. But the reduced foot print makes all the difference.

Really, the best option would be to use a small pump (I have a Mag 5 on it right now) with a manifold to the filter. Which is what I will do when I rebuild this system. The Mag 5 should last at least a few hours on a 1500VA UPS.

 

[jsvand5]

I would probably use marine pure blocks instead of live rock. Just to save money and it would be easier to keep clean than the tub of live rock.

 

[sbash]

I would probably use marine pure blocks instead of live rock. Just to save money and it would be easier to keep clean than the tub of live rock.

Interesting point, although the goal is to eliminate live rock entirely, these marine blocks would serve quite well to line the bottoms of each tank.