Blog Comments

When the Di is no longer lowering the red from the to it is time to replace it

It went up to 40 in the last months after a bad nitrate test kit that was reading a perfect 0. I'm struggling to get it down with water changes and it's not moving.
Kent only talks about it being effective in water flow to deal with ammonia and nitrites in fresh and saltwater and it being efficient to be used as a denitrifier in slow water flow like in denitrifiers. no mention of how much flow to push through it. so was wandering if I should push a drip in it or just a few gallons every hour...

I've used Nitrate Sponge by Kent years ago. If I recall, it didn't last too long, but there was a way to recharge it in the oven. What are your current nitrate levels?

Kent surely has some recommendations how to use their product, but you can't compare that to a Sulfur Denitrator - that's a totally different system.

Thanks Mark.
Can you please elaborate on the layout being a little limiting? Any thing you would change?
Reason for making the bubble trap so big was to use it for adding carbon, filter floss in case of bacterial blooms... in it as it should get very good flow. Now that you mention it being big I guess I'll make it smaller as I ahve learned the lesson to tryt o keep the skimmers section as big as possible. Guess I'll drop it to 4X4-4x6.
I could have the water from the fishroom hit the water behind the partition of the 2 fuges to limit the effect on the cryptic zone....or maybe just forget abot the cryptic zon in this sump and have it in the bigger fuge in the fishroom?
I will have a huge fuge up in the filtration room so do you think I should make the fuge under the stand a little smaller to use the space for something else?
Plumbing!!! that does bring back some difficult memories from my 150 G build as I had to continuously redo part of the plumbing....

Hi Maroun,

also sump will handle around 1000 drain from tank and 1500-2000 GPH coming from additional sump in Fishroom 7-8 feet higher. would appreciate any advise on bubble tower or baffles (planning 2.25 inch separation between baffles and the middle one 2 inches higher than the 2 side ones) would also appreciate any advise on wethear I should get the drain from fishrooms sump (coming from a gravity drained fuge) to which part of the stand sump? Can't guide it to tank as it'll cause many bubbles and I'm afraid draining it in the bubble tower will lead to the pods being sucked by the skimmers. Would you just drain it in the fuge in a bubble tower or will that also cause too much flow in the fuge?

With a sump that is 60" x 26" I don't think 3000gph flowing through it will be a problem. Your layout is a little limiting, but if you send 25% of the flow (750gph) to the refugium zones, that leaves you with 2250gph hitting the skimmer section. The bubble tower you've drawn is pretty big. 10" x 4" seems like a waste of space. A 1.5" bulkhead can drain 1500gph and your tower is 12x that size. 4" x 4" would be enough, but if you wanted it to be 4" x 6", that's still big enough for anything you throw at it.

The bubble trap section should have the a baffles 2" apart. The middle baffle being up 2" is perfect.

That water draining from the fishroom's higher sump can go to the refugium zone if you like, but I think it will cause the cryptic zone to be less cryptic. I would send part of it to the refugium and the rest to the skimmer zone. Your plumbing is going to be interesting.

A fuge with very slow water movement which supposably allows for easier pods breeding.

what is the cryptic fuge?

Apparently the limit is 10000 characters not words as I reached it...
Guess I'll just post the pictures on the initial entry and leave the chit chat here...

Now for the more serious part where I will need help and suggestions:

Tank design:
As I will not have access to the tank from the side and back, And especially that no constructor here feels safe in cutting the back or side glass like this for an external overflow as they don’t feel the glass companies have the know how to provide a fully safe grooved glass. I have two options:
-modifying the left side cabinets to be able to go in them and reach into the tank from a side opening of the canopy and then maybe have an internal overflow.
-Having an external overflow without cutting a groove in the glass, ie internal shallow overflow with screen, 2-3 1” holes in the side glass leading to an external overflow box with the drains in it, or maybe just drains connected to the side of the tank directly. I personally prefer a box with the drains drilled in the bottom rather than a drainfollowed by a an elbow directly…

The tank will protrude around 6 inches from the silver cabinets so the Overflow will be deep inside. so far I'm still checking if we can make the silver cabinet removable and only place no fixed items in it so I can take it out in case I need to access tank...

Thanks for any suggestions you can give.

Awesome planning, following along!

Yes, there is a limit of 10,000 words, but I doubt you are anywhere near it. You can always make a new entry with more information, and title it accordingly.

Thanks for tidying up Marc. Did post some updates in edit of the initial blogentry but at a certain moment its not letting me add more text is there a limit for 10000 words or something!
Thanks for all the replies. Will try to get this thread up to date as there were some more progress with construction.

That's how I envision my next house. We're looking at moving to south carolina in a few years since I own 5 acres down there and when the house is built, the big setup is definitely going to be included and figured in.

I can't wait to see how all this finishes up, so please keep making posts as you make some progress on it :-P

That is thinking ahead there
i bet it's gonna be AWESOME

Looking good, can't wait to see how it turns out.

Hi Maroun. You can post everything in the initial entry, no need to insert them as comments. Then we can chatter about how amazing it is under your write up. I'll go see if I can merge it for you.

EDIT: All tidied up for you. If you need to add more, mouse over your blog's title, and when you see the red crayon appear, click on that to open the editor again to add more information.