The DSR Method (Dutch Synthetic Reefing)

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Also, in the article you said that the bacteria from vinegar dosing tended to accumulate on your used GAC. Would you suggest (or would it be beneficial) if I ran one reactor with fresh GAC and another reactor with used GAC? Could this help contain the bacteria from the display and into the reactor which is near my sump. Thanks again for the help, and sorry Glenn for using your thread to communicate with Randy

That can be a good way to help confine the bacteria growth to a placed that is OK (on the GAC), as opposed to in the display tank, but it isn't necessary in most cases.

 

[Guz]

On board Glenn thanks for the heads up

 

[Reef Rover]

Any word from Glenn?

 

[glennf]

Any word from Glenn?

I am still here. But i need some incentive (single questions) to translate what's needed from my dutch site, otherwise it's like i am talking to myself...
Allow me some time to reply because i am very busy nowaday. (Renovation)

 

[tchan]

Wow, love your dsr system glenn. I have a 135g tank, and do a 20g wc almost every 8-9 days with seachem reefsalt mix. Dosing brs 2 parts, and running gfo and skimmer. all corals and livestock is alive. My only problem is i cant feed heavy, or else i cant control the Phos even with the routine wc. Would love to see a better solution to it other than wc when phos peeks up. Thx

 

[reefwiser]

Pick up the latest issue of Coral magazine. Glenn has a article about DSR
http://www.reef2rainforest.com/2015/06/30/coral-magazine-table-of-contents-julaug-2015/

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Wow, love your dsr system glenn. I have a 135g tank, and do a 20g wc almost every 8-9 days with seachem reefsalt mix. Dosing brs 2 parts, and running gfo and skimmer. all corals and livestock is alive. My only problem is i cant feed heavy, or else i cant control the Phos even with the routine wc. Would love to see a better solution to it other than wc when phos peeks up. Thx

There are many better ways to reduce phosphate than a water change. Growing macroalgae, organic carbon dosing, binders of various sorts, such as the GFO you use. Replacing it more often or using more should alleviate phosphate issues.

This has more:

Phosphate In The Reef Aquarium: By Randy Holmes-Farley
https://www.reef2reef.com/blog/phosphate-in-the-reef-aquarium-by-randy-holmes-farley/

 

[glennf]

Wow, love your dsr system glenn. I have a 135g tank, and do a 20g wc almost every 8-9 days with seachem reefsalt mix. Dosing brs 2 parts, and running gfo and skimmer. all corals and livestock is alive. My only problem is i cant feed heavy, or else i cant control the Phos even with the routine wc. Would love to see a better solution to it other than wc when phos peeks up. Thx

First you need to find the reason why you PO4 is always creeping op.

WC is imo the way to do when you don't want to thinks about these isssues, but just execute the standaard routines.

Heavy feeding demand a structural way of removing your excesses.
But first you need to (re)assess if what you want, is within physical possible boundaries.

you need to evaluate if the PO4 you put into you tank is possible to remove with various methods and what way is most cost effective to remove it.

As randy pointed out there are many ways to remove PO4 . The one is more suitable, efficient, and cost efficient than the other.
Some have their limitation and others are way to expensive to be using on daily bases, others require more space you maybe don't have. So there is always a choice that suit your purpose best, even if it's not the best of all....

These are the questions to be asking:
- is your tank overstocked with fish ?
- what do you feed you thank with?
- do you overfeed and why?
- what do you use to replace evaporated water.
- is this water pure enough and do you use a RO device with DI filter? (TDS measurement on input/output DI filter is recommended.
- is you skimmer full functioning and up to the job?
- is you lighting sufficient and the right one for the job?
- how do you remove dertritus?
- is there enough random operated streamers in the tank
paused....

 

[tchan]

Thanks for the fast reply Randy and Glenn. Ok. I'll describe my system a little more. Its a 135g with a 20g old oceanic sump modified. Yes, too small i know. Will upgrade soon. Inside the sump have a small section for a hold/refugium with 6-7 rbta and a flame angel and a sand bed. A super reef octopus 3000sro next to the drain pipe that i have a small egg crate looking basket cover by a 100mm fiber filter pad to catch all the detritus. Then a return pump area.

Live stocks
1 clown, 1 six line wrasse, 1 flame hawk, 3 huge tangs 1 Bangai cardinal and just added a copperband butterfly. All fishes are around 2-3 yrs old in the system.

Corals
Bunch of z/ps, lots of sps mostly frags and mini colonies, and some Lps frags as well.

Feeding
I feed 1/4 piece of sushi seaweed a day in the morning, then 3 pinches of new life spectrum pellets 1mm
And 2 frozen block of mysis/brine shrimp a week.

Parameters atm
Ca 375. Alk 6.7. Mg 1400. Phos 0.03 salinity 1.025 temp 78 Not much fluctuation.

Wc is when i see algaes accumulate on the tank glasses. Scraping the algaes while pumping water out. Then add new water back in.

 

[tchan]

I do use brs rox in a bag near the skimmer area and a next reef gfo filled with 250g rowaphos, change every few months.
And i have a spectra pure rodi 90g manual flush system that i changed all filters and membrane when output read 002.

Yep. So here's my tank specs. And trying to find a better way to control phos so i can maybe do Wc once a month instead of 7-8 days. And be able to feed more, my tangs are getting aggresive toward each other i think is the limitation of food sources.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I do use brs rox in a bag near the skimmer area and a next reef gfo filled with 250g rowaphos, change every few months.
.

If you have elevated phosphate or an algae problem, the GFO might be depleted in only a few hours to days. Waiting a few months and it is almost certainly depleted. So I'd suggest replacing it now.

 

[tchan]

I just changed both a week ago. And rowaphos is not cheap. Thats why I'm a little conserve on it. Is there any other substitute? I have used a bio pellet media before and didnt go well. And not planning on going back.

 

[tchan]

Maybe i didnt use the bio pellets correctly or when to stop? It cause a huge algae outbreak that almost crash the whole system. Might not be the bio pellets thats cause the algae to start but definitely helps growing them.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I just changed both a week ago. And rowaphos is not cheap. Thats why I'm a little conserve on it. Is there any other substitute? I have used a bio pellet media before and didnt go well. And not planning on going back.

There are many suitable brands of GFO. I use the BRS brand.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Maybe i didnt use the bio pellets correctly or when to stop? It cause a huge algae outbreak that almost crash the whole system. Might not be the bio pellets thats cause the algae to start but definitely helps growing them.

I'd be surprised if green algae was spurred to grow by the presence of biopellets. I'm not sure how that could happen, and I've not heard it reported.

Cyanobacteria, however, is sometimes a side effect, especially at the start.

 

[tchan]

Thanks Randy, I'll give the brs brand a try. It looks to be more economical. Be awesome if they have the same effect. And sorry for Hijacking your thread Glenn. My goal is to do WC once a month for now. Hopefully longer down the road. Keep up the good work, Glenn. We need more people like u and Randy to make this hobby more accessible and affordable. After all, it's everyone's dream to have an awesome reef inside their home or office.

 

[Iamonlyme]

saved!

 

[mazoli]

Hi Glenn, trying to make my own salt. Reading your recipee, the Sr (together with B, I and Fe) are all in ml, based on your 1 liter solutions. I live in Hungary, where I have access to basic Balling additives, like Sr-Ba complex, I-Fl complex and Metal complex (like described here http://reefdreams.de/lang_eng/info_3_eng.html). From here I can get the required dosing in ml if I would know the measure in grams for these. Is this something that could work? I have no other access to these basic elements required in smaller quantities. For boron I can get borax, then calculate the required amount if you could provide this infromation as well. Red through your posts and could not find the amount in gramms for these 4 elements. Thanks, and have a Happy New Year!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Here's a recipe based on grams:

An Artificial Seawater Recipe
For those who are interested, the following artificial seawater recipe is taken from "Chemical Oceanography" by Frank Millero. It makes a recipe that matches 35 ppt seawater in terms of major ions, but does not try to match all minor and trace elements, most of which will be present as impurities in the major elements.

23.98 g sodium chloride
5.029 g magnesium chloride
4.01 g sodium sulfate
1.14 g calcium chloride
0.699 g potassium chloride
0.172 g sodium bicarbonate
0.100 g potassium bromide
0.0254 g boric acid
0.0143 g strontium chloride
0.0029 g sodium fluoride
Water to 1 kg total weight.

 

[mazoli]

Here's a recipe based on grams:

An Artificial Seawater Recipe
For those who are interested, the following artificial seawater recipe is taken from "Chemical Oceanography" by Frank Millero. It makes a recipe that matches 35 ppt seawater in terms of major ions, but does not try to match all minor and trace elements, most of which will be present as impurities in the major elements.

23.98 g sodium chloride
5.029 g magnesium chloride
4.01 g sodium sulfate
1.14 g calcium chloride
0.699 g potassium chloride
0.172 g sodium bicarbonate
0.100 g potassium bromide
0.0254 g boric acid
0.0143 g strontium chloride
0.0029 g sodium fluoride
Water to 1 kg total weight.

Thank you Randy for you reply. This is a DSR thread, I was looking for Glenn's own reipee, which I could not find it in detail. Happy New Year to you all!