FarmerTy

Wow! Jealous in so many ways! Random question but I've been trying to identify an SPS in my tank and it looks just like the light cyan blue one right in front of your chalice. Some kind of blue tort?

I think it is all relative when we describe smaller tanks as "harder". I kept a nanocube (12 gallons) for 6 of my 9 years of reefing, and didn't once have a crash. Though I had to be meticulous with the regularity of my water changes, it was easily done with such a small volume of water. Besides that, the tank pretty much took care of itself. Any newbie can setup a similar system with similar husbandry practices, and more than likely be successful. I didn't have a magic touch of any sort. Just the same as everybody else starting out, we read what we could and did the best we could to keep our little oceans alive. Relatively speaking, if someone was to ask me if keeping my 125-gallon is easier than my nanocube? I would say a hell of a lot easier. I don't have to worry about large scale changes occurring quickly within a small body of water. It's more stable, when compared to the 12g nanocube I had. I think the well-intentioned advice of some of the folks for Drew, including myself, was that after his larger system crashed on him, the mindset was that he would go to a smaller system (a pico) because it was easier. None of us want him to lose his passion for saltwater tanks and just want to warn that in our experiences (again, just our experiences), keeping the smaller system was harder than when we ran a larger volume system, let alone a pico. Emily, you give great advice on buying what you can afford and reasonably maintain. I understand the sentiment for defending smaller tanks. More often then not, I miss my nanocube and its simplicity and beauty. George hit a good point as well, that smaller tanks are great at letting you focus on the smaller things in the sea. I just wanted to state that the emphasis on the unstableness of smaller systems in this topic was for more Drew's sake in case his thought was keeping a pico system was easier than his larger system. To be honest, I don't think I could keep a pico system alive myself. But since Drew has Kim's mentoring, I'm sure he will be fine in his new tank setup. As always, I hope I didn't offend anyone as that is never my intent.

Did you keep the same photoperiod Mike? I would suspect the higher par jump from old bulbs to new bulbs more than I suspect 10k to 20k. Either case, it is always a good idea to drop the photoperiod to something like 4 hrs from whatever yours was before (5-10) each time your replace bulbs, especially if its been about a year since the last change. Last question, were they the same bulb brand?

+1 on the smaller tanks being more sensitive Sorry about your tank loss.

Josh, you just add more media as it gets used up. But at least for me, that's been a very slow process as it takes awhile for my biopellets to get used up. I've basically only added one scoop (1/2 cup) in the year that I have run them. Again, I don't run very much pellets though. Others may differ.

Check out the link on mantis shrimps. http://www.livescience.com/20811-hard-hitting-crustacean-claw-engineering.html

Hey, thanks for the idea Radney At least we were on the same track of thinking! Haha.

No problem Josh.

George, I'm just thinking the timing on everything is what is causing the SPS to die right now. I agree with your additions (GFO, carbon dosing), personally, I would just do it on a longer time table. You were running a non-coral tank for the initial setup of your system, then you added anemones and ornamental shrimps/crabs. You slowly introduced coral into your system (much kudos on the patience of your introduction schedule) and now you are looking to change your filtering/additive regiment to have nice clean, pure water that we all try to attain. I say take the same patience you had with adding corals slowly and do the same with the additions of the GFO/carbon and carbon dosing. You'll be surprised how tough most corals are and even more surprised when they show such sensitivity to the most subtle shifts. My guess is the quick depletion PO4/NO3 in your system and the quick removal of organics in your system is what is causing your STN right now. Also, the potential increase in bacterial populations in your tank may have an effect as well. Again, just my opinion, you're doing all the things I would do to my own tank, I would just say do one thing at a time, let it adjust over a period of time, then introduce something else, typically at a rate slower then recommended by the manufacturer. Lots of changes in a tank = lots of problems is usually what I run into. Man... sorry for being overly preachy... I just reread what I wrote. -Ty

No problem, happy to share my experiences. The reefing community was good to me when I was setting up my tank. If that was my setup, that's exactly what I would do Steve. Try to work it however you can to get it to pull as much of the biopellet effluent into the skimmer as possible. Just a heads up, IME, I think biopellet manufacturers grossly overestimate the amount of biopellets needed for a system. I found balance at 1/3 of the recommended amount. Prior to that, I was getting faded colors in my SPS, even with tons of feeding. Also, the stock TLF 150 reactor is not the most ideal reactor for biopellets. It tends to tumble really well for the first 2-3 months, but when the pellets start getting sticky due to the bacteria build-up, the biopellets don't tumble as well anymore and you start to get build-up in your reactor. The idea behind the biopellets is to have them tumble a bit to slough off the bacteria into the skimmer. When mine started sticking at about 2-3 months and not tumbling, you could see the bacterial slime in the reactor. That's when I started getting cyano. I actually modified my TLF 150 reactor (I do enjoy saving money and the DIY'er experience). I was going to post a "how to" in a couple of months after I confirm that it still works as well when the pellets start getting sticky but if/when you get to that point, just PM me and I'll let you know what I did. It cost me a whole $2.99 and some extra tubing I had laying around. -Ty

Dave, I actually have a reservoir for my topoff water right beside my tank already. The reservoir was being run with an ATO system to my main tank for replenishment of evaporated water. The idea was to run the RO/DI unit straight to that reservoir with a float valve to keep it from overfilling. I originally had it running to another reservoir I had in the garage to use to mix salt for water changes but since I haven't changed my water in 1.5 years, I'm thinking of just routing the line straight to my reservoir beside my tank.

Timfish - thanks. I was liking that option best. I like the idea of a drain line in case my float valve fails and the RO/DI system keeps churning out water in my game room. I'm not worried about overdosing the tank with topoff water because that is regulated by my ATO. I'm just getting the water to the reservoir, the ATO controls the amount of topoff water that leaves that reservoir into my tank. Now, there's no guarantee that ATO wouldn't malfunction though and dump my tank full of freshwater... but that's a whole other set of problems.

My bad scubasteve, didn't realize you had a skimmer. Somehow I got the impression you didn't. I don't see a problem with your proposed setup. My only concern would be trying to hit that perfect balance of just enough tumble for the GFO and too much for the GAC. I'm sure others will chime in with their opinions but for me, I would think it hard to dial both in as they use the same feed. You can't really throttle one up or down without affecting the downstream reactor's flow. Is there no way you can have the hose run directly into your skimmer so you can use biopellets?

Hate to break it to you Scubasteve but a skimmer is a requirement for biopellets, not an optional hardware to use. The whole premise behind biopellets is a carbon food source for bacteria to grow and use nitrates and phosphates, then they are sluffed off the biopellets by process of the tumbling action and IMO, should go directly into the skimmer... not optionally near the skimmer. Either way, a skimmer is required. Otherwise, you're just going to turn your tank into a bacteria farm and more than likely kill everything in it. Just a heads up if you do decide to get a skimmer and use biopellets, my phosphate was measured at 0.015 ppm with my super low Hanna checker (detection down to ppb) and I still had cyano at that phosphate level. Before I got the hanna checker, I thought my phosphate was low because it wasn't showing any color on the color scale and then the first time I tested with the Hanna checker, it read 0.90 ppm! The checker gives you a whole new definition of low phosphate IMO. I'm reading at 0.010 ppm consistently now and my cyano is slowly starting to go away, that is with GFO running in my system constantly now. I think you're fine with GFO and carbon, especially for a nano tank. That's what I would do at least if I still had my nanocube. Just my 2 cents. -Ty

If you run the biopellets, I would still run the GFO. In my experience, the biopellets will remove almost all the nitrates in your system and some phosphates, but leave enough phosphates for cyano to grow and be a problem. It's an imbalance that can be negated by removing as much phosphates as you can as well, with the addition of the GFO.

I worried about it 2 years ago when we had the really bad freezes in the winter, but it didn't affect anything Bio. At the worst, it's hung up there and I could just take it in when a real bad freeze may be coming. Wizard- That's why I'm liking option 2 a lot more. Use the smaller diameter tubing and add a booster pump. The smaller diameter tubing would require less force to push the water so I'm hoping that might work for the distance and the vertical head I have to overcome.

So, I'm realizing that one of my last non-automated tasks for my tank is refilling the top-off water reservoir every week. I don't really have any ideas yet on how to accomplish this yet but I wanted to put it out there in case some reefers have some sage advice for me. My RO/DI system is out in the garage. I run it into a 35-gallon trash can with a float valve on it so it's always nice and full for me to use. My tank is in my game room, which is adjacent to the garage. I have a 20-gallon reservoir on wheels by the tank. Every week i manually roll the reservoir to the one in the garage and refill it. Obviously, after hearing how clunky my setup is right now, you can see why I would like to automate this process. A direct line from reservoir to reservoir is about 12'. I envisioned a hole in the wall between the room and my garage, but the issue is the tank is not against the wall that is adjacent to the garage. There is an entryway at that point between the tank and the garage, so I would probably have to run the line above the doorway and along the wall to my reservoir. Option 1) Run this massively ugly PVC pipe through my wall, above my doorway, and then back down to the other side of the tank where my tank reservoir is. I would paint the PVC the same color as the wall and maybe add some things here and there to distract from the fact that there is PVC running along the door frame. The pump would also have to be pretty strong to pump the water and I would have to install an on/off switch to manually turn the pump on/off to fill up the reservoir from inside the house. Option 2) Run just the smaller diameter line that comes straight out of my RO/DI unit and run that along the wall. The only issue being that my house may not supply enough water pressure to push the water 12-14' to my tank, with about 6' of vertical head as well. The piping would be much easier to hide. The downside would be if there ever was a failure on the float valve, my game room would be flooded with water until I noticed. Small worry I guess because it's been in operation for 3 years and never once failed in the garage. I believe I can supplement the additional pressure needed to pump straight into my game room from my garage with an additional booster pump. These are the two options that pop into my head right now. Any other ideas/tips or advice is certainly welcome. TIA! -Ty

Not that I heard of George. I think its fine. If you had to be picky, you could separate the two as I'd imagine they would saturate at different rates, albeit very close rates, but that's just me being weird.

+1 on what Juiceman said, Maxijet 1200 works well for me with two reactors daisy-chained. It'll give you more power that you can easily throttle down, versus not enough power with the Maxijet 600 and no ability to throttle up. Just FYI, I run my carbon in a bag in my sump off to the side. I've read a couple of articles that convinced me of the passive absorption capabilities of carbon so I just leave it in a bag off to the side in indirect flow. Also, I remember reading an interesting article about a possible link between lateral line erosion in fishes and carbon dust. Just another reason I run mine on the side as the reactors tend to generate a lot of dust due to the mechanical tumbling and the constant colliding of carbon granules. A quick google search should generate the articles if you were interested in reading them. As always, don't take my word on it. Just something I've read in the past and convinced myself it made since and was worth doing. -Ty

Mitch, those look like slightly closed up purple deaths.

Yeah, go bigger now. You'll want one that's bigger eventually. I went from a nano to a 65, and now a 125... and I'm dreaming about at 250. At least go 120+.

Check craigslist Clayton. I thought I saw a Red Sea Max 130d on there a little big ago.

Thanks James for the pagoda and the generous Tubbs zoa frag. Just a heads up to everyone, the coral look great and the pictures do no justice. Would have bought the anemone and the duncan frag myself if I didn't already have both. They are both big and beautiful.

Metal Halide sold!

James, I'll take a tubbs frag as well with the Pagoda. Thanks!