Byron & Reneé's 465g reef - 700g+ total

[nvfishman]

I would skip on the sand bed in the fuge as well it is just tough to clean
with the rock work in the main display there is enough bacteria to support the system.
with cheoto in fuge is a good breeding groung for pods.

first time i put egg crate under rocks with powerheads blowing lifted with some 3/4 pvc just like in frag tank

also did had a 15 gallon remote sand bed (like anthony calfo said i thought it was a great idea) in the system to keep nitrates down and was seeming good,

but Dr. Tim did a talk to our club and said at some point the debris in the sand will make the tank crash ( cant rember exact words) after that I pulled it down

key is to have as little rotting matter in the tank and siphon it out as it collects

I have close to 40,000 gallons of water flow in my tank and still getting detritus settleing on the rocks

 

[byron]

I would skip on the sand bed in the fuge as well it is just tough to clean
with the rock work in the main display there is enough bacteria to support the system.
with cheoto in fuge is a good breeding groung for pods.

first time i put egg crate under rocks with powerheads blowing lifted with some 3/4 pvc just like in frag tank

also did had a 15 gallon remote sand bed (like anthony calfo said i thought it was a great idea) in the system to keep nitrates down and was seeming good,

but Dr. Tim did a talk to our club and said at some point the debris in the sand will make the tank crash ( cant rember exact words) after that I pulled it down

key is to have as little rotting matter in the tank and siphon it out as it collects

I have close to 40,000 gallons of water flow in my tank and still getting detritus settleing on the rocks

thank you for the pointers... do you have a link to pics of your setup anywhere that I could go look at -- or something similar. Would help me to see a setup you describe...

The refug is a 150g Rubermaid tank. I gotta figure out how to attach power heads in it? I dont think the surface would allow anything to suction to it.

 

[EnV]

Hey, I want to give a postive shout out to John at ReefCleaners... hopefully that's not against the rules because he appears to be a sponsor here..

I started a back and forth with John awhle back because I wanted to get some live stuff in the tank... and John is in the business of selling live stuff.

I told him what I was doing and that I was only vaguely aware of the right way to do stuff and that I wanted to order a crap load of his stuff to get my system going. John had me send pictures of the system and describe where it was... anyway we had a bunch of back and forths and John told me "not to buy anything" for a while, that the tank wasn't ready... A SALES GUY WITH STUFF TO SELL ME TOLD ME NOT TO ORDER IT. Take note of that... it's important.

Anyway, I now have stuff on order with John...

John and Reefcleaners are good people in my book... they are running a business, but they are not doing it at the expense of their clients. When you need their type of services -- consider them... just saying...

I just got an order from him as well! He is an outstanding guy, he advises you not as a salesmen but as a honest person, as he even recommended a downgrade for a package.

 

[byron]

not a lot to post about in tha last several days... alkalinity was way out of whack -- maybe the GFO reactor is the culprint. Anyway, I started to bring it back up too quickly and shot the pH up, so I backed off and went a longer route. I was down at 5.2 dkH and I have a boat load of snails in there now...

I now have the Ca, Mg & Alk dosing pumps connected, so ran all three lines into the Alk reservoir and tripple dripped for about 10 hrs -- according to the BRS calculator I was 600+ mL low :squigglemouth: -- anyway I got it back to just over 8dkH with totally trashing pH. The dosing pump only run at 1.1mL/min and running them constantly may burn out the motors. My total water volume is 750g.

Goes to show you cant just skip some of the tests. I wasn't doing the Alk testing because I didnt have anything in the tank, then I added a bunch of snails. Then I went, oh crap...

I probably would have run the test then except that I was getting ready to install the dosing pumps and wanted to get a baseline.

 

[byron]

so another issue I'm working is that conductivity is slowing climbing evern though I have ATO running... haven't got handle on the one yet.

I'm topping off to a line in the sump -- which should be sufficient. I not sure how the DT or fuge could dropping low with the sump holding steady because water always seeks its own level.

But, somehow, something strange is occuring that that I'm not yet recognizing. I'm not a fluid dynamics guy, but it would seem to me that if I refill the sump to the "start" line/level, that water volume should be staying constant, within reason.

The fuge is tuneable both on entrace and exit, so maybe its the culprit -- I do periodically still dork with the various gates and ball valves around the system... still nooding through it. I do need to put a powerhead in the fuge because it probably has dead spots, but I dont think that's the problem.

After the water change on Sunday, the system read 34.8 and its now up to 35.4.

 

[WillKatt]

Are you double checking the salinity with a refractometer? I don't know how much I would trust a salinity probe they can be very unreliable and sometimes do not stay calibrated for long.

 

[byron]

Are you double checking the salinity with a refractometer? I don't know how much I would trust a salinity probe they can be very unreliable and sometimes do not stay calibrated for long.

Milwaukee MA887 Seawater Refractometer... it reflects a slightly higher reading also... it's not that salinity too high necesarily, its that I don't understand why its climbing at all.

I think I may start bringing down toward 34.

 

[tiag]

Don't mean to insult your intelligence but you are topping off with RO water right, not salt water...?

 

[byron]

Don't mean to insult your intelligence but you are topping off with RO water right, not salt water...?

you mean I am suppose to use RO??? but this is a salt water tank :xd:

(yes it is RO... the two storage reservoirs ARE next to each other, but the ATO line IS plumbed from the RO tank)

 

[chort55]

The refug is a 150g Rubermaid tank. I gotta figure out how to attach power heads in it? I dont think the surface would allow anything to suction to it.

Throw a couple koralia 1400's in there, they will suction + magnetically attatch to the sides of the rubbermaid... and if you want to you can set them to a timer and randomly mix things up which IMO does a better job keeping things suspended in the water column then a constant flow anyways.

 

[chort55]

Also, refractometers drift, have you recalibrated that as well lately??

 

[byron]

Throw a couple koralia 1400's in there, they will suction + magnetically attatch to the sides of the rubbermaid... and if you want to you can set them to a timer and randomly mix things up which IMO does a better job keeping things suspended in the water column then a constant flow anyways.

so maybe my assumption that the walls of the stock tanks are too coarse for suction cup are just incorrect??

btw, with the Apex and EB's I can oscillate any pump -- may burn some out that way, but I can oscillate them

 

[byron]

Also, refractometers drift, have you recalibrated that as well lately??

agree... I zero it using RO before each use, but I havent used the calibration fluid on it in the past 30 days.

 

[byron]

the rise in salinity may have been identified. Over on the chemistry section of another board, one of the gurus with with 64,000 posts responded with this simple thought:

Anything dosed into the tank might raise the salinity over time. A 2-part will do that, for example.

my reply:

OK, that is likely the issue then... Alk was way low so I added enough to bring it up 1.4 dkH, because I have 750g that was a lot -- and that did shoot the pH up -- and maybe the salinity as well???

I then backed off for 12 hrs to let the pH settle back out and began slowing dosing to finish brining Alk back. The salinity does seem to have stopped rising and is at 35.2 this morning.

I didn't realize that 2 part would raise salinity.

 

[pickupman66]

I didnt think that the salinity could rise from a dosage of Alk mixture. from what i remember (I dont dose) it is mixed with RO water. also, the alkalinity wont really effect the snails at all except for the fact that a low alkalinity can lead to PH swings.

 

[byron]

I didnt think that the salinity could rise from a dosage of Alk mixture. from what i remember (I dont dose) it is mixed with RO water. also, the alkalinity wont really effect the snails at all except for the fact that a low alkalinity can lead to PH swings.

idk, but I appreciate the feedback. The pH had been steady -- until I put in a large amount of alk 2 part solution... that shot the pH up... it's now back steady. Alk is still low, but I'm slowly working it up. The BRS calculator called of a gallon+ (71oz) 2 part mix just to bring the system up 1.4 dkH -- I was down at 5.56, and I put it all in a once -- stupid me, really shot up pH. But that's when I saw salinity start to move upwards.

Anyway, after I got to 7, I backed off and started bringing it the rest of the way slowly -- still just below 8.

I'm also getting ready to order a couple of small powerheads to put at either end of the fuge, in case it has large deadspots where no flow allows build up. I probably have 250 lbs of rock in it and currently the only flow is in from sump to DT bypass and out through gravity feed to sump. The sump stirs up more with feeds from 3 sources: DT drain, fuge and output from Bubble King (which is a lot).

btw, you can see all of my Apex settings and output from reeftronics.net -- Byron S

as I let this tank stabilize and learn its personality I know more about how to react to it.

 

[pickupman66]

You can also use baking soda to raise the alk without raising the calcium. It will swing the Ph up but that is usually just temporary. Dont sweat the Ph too much just don't let it fly around alot in a short period. While I have half the water you do, I make a super saturated solution of it in a gallon milk jug and then drip that into the sump. Dont quote me on it but I think I read somewhere that if you bake the baking soda and then make the super saturated solution it won't raise the Ph but I may be wrong on that. Google it a bit. If your calcium is low go get Mrs wages pickling lime. It will raise both CA and alk.

Go from where you are to where u want to be over a few days span. Ie... dose a day off a day etc...

Sent from my SCH-I905 using Tapatalk 2

 

[byron]

You can also use baking soda to raise the alk without raising the calcium. It will swing the Ph up but that is usually just temporary. Dont sweat the Ph too much just don't let it fly around alot in a short period. While I have half the water you do, I make a super saturated solution of it in a gallon milk jug and then drip that into the sump. Dont quote me on it but I think I read somewhere that if you bake the baking soda and then make the super saturated solution it won't raise the Ph but I may be wrong on that. Google it a bit. If your calcium is low go get Mrs wages pickling lime. It will raise both CA and alk.

Go from where you are to where u want to be over a few days span. Ie... dose a day off a day etc...

Sent from my SCH-I905 using Tapatalk 2

thanks again for some great tips...

Ca is actually just high, 494. Mg a bit low still, bringing that up also...

I'm working to get it all correct so that I can then figure out hw much to have the dosing pumps run to keep there.

 

[allabout]

Very awesome setup, wow, just read through 12 pages of a thread! Can't wait to see some inhabitants in there, your patience is admirable!

 

[byron]

so we finally got around to ordering some livestock and setting up the QT: (39g filled to 30g)

9 blue/green reef chromis (Chromis viridis) -- we wanted something to school for us... and so and far they are sticking together in the QT. Although we do know that the schooling occurs in the wild to fend off predators and that often they will not school in captivity when they dont feel threatened, so we'll see.

probably give these guys about 7-8 weeks in QT then move them over. Then next on the QT list will probably be some tangs.

Also brought in a few more inverts that went into the tank:
1 pincushion urchin (Tripneustes)
1 tiger striped serpent sea star (Ophiolepsis/Ophioderma sp.)
1 banded coral shrimp (Stenopus hispidus)
2 skunk scarlet cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis)
2 emerald crabs (Mythrax sculptus)
12 scarlet reef hermit crabs (Paguristes cadenati)
24 dwarf red tip hermit crabs (Clibanarius sp.)

to join the 300+ snails we added a couple of weeks ago (did I mention before that we love inverts -- nothing more peaceful than to sit and watch a snail crawl the length of an 8ft tank)