I'm curious to hear about some of these new ideas your keen to try (if you don't mind sharing). Also please post some pics of your sump! Curious to see any changes! (Your whole setup is amazing, but I especially love the sump/skimmer area....amazing original detailed work!)
Thanks gettareef,
Reefing is sharing mate, the more people learn, try & share the better for the whole hobby we think :)
The new ideas are not "new" as such & many seasoned reefers are probably well aware of them. They are new to me & involve media I have no experience with. Andrews sump is very basic, the usual heater, skimmer & that's about it, similar to ours in its simplicity. The biggest difference is he swears by a product called Matrix & uses a fair amount in his sump. From looking around, it seems to combat Ammonia, Nitrite & Nitrate. We don't have a problem with those 3 so never bothered to look at it as something we can use.
I might jump around here so bare with me lol :confused: I understand the basics but wording something I haven't attempted & getting my head around the concept is hard for an old bloke. I like things to make sense in my head & understand the process before taking the plunge lol.
That dusty algae that covers your glass & wavemakers, the spores of this algae thrive on Ammonia, Matrix converts Ammonia quicker then the live rock in our systems. Remove the Ammonia quicker, the slower the algae populate, the less we are cleaning the glass. There were other benefits explained to us but they escape me at the moment. My initial thoughts were how bloody simple! Here we are reducing Phosphate & nitrate to combat algae & this just seems so easy when used in conjunction Matrix. Just maybe, we don't need to chase that finial .02 reduction in Phosphate after all?
One thing I did learn, when you first get a container of Matrix, he will soak it all in RO, any stones that float or are completely black are removed & thrown out. I can't recall why sorry lol :rolleyes: We would need around 80Ltrs (22 gallons) of Matrix, so this little experiment may have to wait awhile lol, this stuff aint cheap when you need so much. Over here that works out to just shy of $1000 :eek:
Next on the list was dosing. He uses the 3 main sup's, Alk, Calc & Mag. The other sup's are
Brightwell Koralcolor, Lugols & Salifert Trace Hard. Somewhere I remember a story about Maganese Chloride being very important in one of the above, which has a large impact on the life cycle of algae. Some sciency stuff happening here about affecting the coating the algae or blocking mouth's or something like that lol. Perhaps someone like Randy would know but I'm not going to annoy him lol. I do remember that Maganese breaks down under blue light, so following the dosing instructions (people do that?) means dosing weekly. If one of the main ingredients breaks down under blue light, whats the point of dosing weekly?? Most of our tanks start & finish the day under blues, you have to dose daily to see the best benefits, makes sense to me now.
I had 4 bottles of the Trace Hard turn up at work today, that will last 2 months so will be giving this a go shortly.
That's about all I remember from the visit, but will be sure to catch up with him again to glean a little more knowledge.
Some may read this & disagree, that's cool, we all have different ways of doing things trying to achieve the same results. You'll notice the lack of LR in his tank. I did steal a pic from Andrews TH which I'll leave here. Hope he doesn't mind lol, if it disappears you'll know why lol.
To the sump, again nothing much has changed down there lol. I'll try & take some pics over the weekend & throw up in here. Anything in particular you want to see down there?
