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To that end, my thinking is that I should put the skimmer downstream of the refugium and the bed filter/plenum back upstream of the refugium to loop that PO4 back around and through.
Yeah, I don’t think it will make much difference either. I view filtration as an aggregate continuous process over time, not a situation where dirty water enters the filter and clean water exits.Some thoughts (after two glasses of wine..).
I think removing the skimmate is more realistic in a tank with high bioload. Maybe after some time the tank will be packed with corals, then reusing the skimmate would be a good way to work against too low nutrients. But that's a pleasant problem.
I like the idea of keeping a sand bed like this in the system, as well as macroalgae and a cryptic zone. But when it comes to running the tank and keeping the nutrients at the desirable levels, it might be easier just going with GFO and adding a carbon source to the aquarium(together with a good skimmer and macroalgae). I know it's not as sophisticated as a controllable sand bed, but sometimes easier ways are just as good(or good enough)
Or, just pack the tank with corals and let them be the nutrient sink.
Skimmer downstream of refugium and macroalgae. I think. But that's just a guess. Probably won't do much difference. But again, just guessing.
After New Years, I’m going to do a pretty major tear-down and reboot of this tank. Once I get that going, I will start another thread on it.Would love to see some more on this thread, makes me feel much better about my many tank mistakes through the years. lol
After New Years, I’m going to do a pretty major tear-down and reboot of this tank. Once I get that going, I will start another thread on it.
There are some elements of the design that I simply can’t do anything about, but I can definitely redesign around those negative features and try to put them in ‘plus territory’.
The benefit of this tank is that I have a pretty massive (200+ gal) and user-friendly sump, and one thing this tank doesn’t have an issue with is water quality. I’ve already restarted the long-dormant refugium, and I’m going to play with a couple of other things to really take it up a level. For example, I was digging around in the space under the sump and found a huge Deltec calcium reactor that I forgot we had...yay!
The issue is that initially the owner didn’t know a lot about aquariums, so they consulted with a few companies to have a tank put in before the house was even built, and ended up going with a company that apparently also didn’t know a lot about aquariums.I am by no means a tank whisperer, but I think this build disaster can also be the fault of the owner. No way (regardless of how much money I have) will I have some put an aquarium like that in the way they did it? I see you mentioned you have serviced this for 10 years? Is that correct? If so, why has it taken so long to attempt to get things right? Is it just that the owner has been pretty stubborn about making changes?
I for one have no problem letting someone know when I see their tank (and hope they do the same for me too) to give my opinion about it and let them know exactly what I would maybe do differently (if anything).You know what they say about opinions, lol.
This tank is a disaster and I would just have to tell the client to make some drastic changes. I also do not think this person could pay me enough to work on this tank (well maybe, ). This is just a hazardous situation to walk into.
That’s pretty much what I’m going to do. I’m not sure what’s underneath all of that, though (and kinda don’t want to know), so I’m not anticipating having a good surface to glue it on to.I would scrape the drywall and glue up FRP over the top, cheap, waterproof and will keep all that from falling into the tank. Good job making the best out of a bad situation
He started another thread about itWhat happened to the updates? You bring me to the edge and just leave me
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/waking-up-from-the-nightmare-build-the-reboot.538918/Sorry tried to copy and paste the thread and it didn't work