Blog Comments

Originally Posted by maroun.c

Thanks Marc.

Please do update is more often with your latest stuff.

Thanks Marc.

Yes, move that 7" baffle to the left but leave 2" of gap there too. Every gap is 2" to avoid microbubbles. And the bubble tower hopefully will work as expected. The picture may give you ideas, or you can do your own thing.

Thanks for all the help Marc.
Agreed on making the whole refugium a DSB, guess I'll just shorten the 7" baffle and shift it to the left side.
That's a Super neat sump I hope mine ends up half decent!!!

Why not make your entire refugium 4" deep with sand? Only issue is how the water enters that zone right now, but a small vertical baffle 5" tall would be just enough to keep the sand in the area and have plant growth above all of the sand. That's a nice big footprint of four square feet of sand. Having a 12" x 12" x 28" zone of sand may not be as effective, and it would put 190 lbs of sand in one spot. With it being 22" x 28" x 4" you'd only use 114 lbs of sand and have more surface area, with 8" of space above all the sand for macro growth (four square feet).

2" baffles for sure, even with the sump 28" wide. Don't go narrower, you want your sump bubble free and I know 2" wide gaps work perfectly because all my large sumps have them.

You can make a big bubble tower in the skimmer zone of the sump to house all those drains. I would plumb the emergency drains into the standard drains with a Tee-fitting. The bottom is never going to clog up, it's the top that might. That will reduce all those pipes. Here's a sump with many drains in the back of the skimmer section:


I would have a return pump for the tank, and the secondary pump feed all the satellite systems and gear via a manifold.

Hi Marc,
Sump will be 28 inches wide. With this width would the 12 inch DSB area be significant? I can make it wider but then that limits the alga area. Could also go for a lengthwise partition instead of a front to back one this way i will have a 24 inch long DSB area but only 14 inch wide?
Another alternative is a dsb area in the skimmer section as i'm upgrading to an external skimmer afterwards and could take out my existing skimmer.

2inches baffles which on the width of the sump will slow down flow i think.
The 4-5000G flow is the nominal rating of the pumps which will still lose a lot due to head loss: 14 foot height and 3 90 degrees elbows...
Drains to skimmer zone are 2x1.5 inch from tank and an additional spare one. Will also have 4x1 inch drains from the frag tanks (2 actual drains and 2 emergency ones)
Appreciate suggestions on flow plan:
- Feed frag tanks, skimmer and water change tank from DT drain or have dedicated feed pumps?
-Feed external skimmer from drain or dedicated pump?
Thanks

Hi Maroun. Great to see you on RA again. With this sump, you didn't show the width of it. I don't see the benefit to a 12" DSB area as part of the refugium as that limits vertical height for macro algae growth. But if you have no or little sand in the display tank(s), this may be your own option.

Make sure your baffles have a 2" (5cm) gap each time, as that will allow you to have that amount of flow through your sump. It's still faster than I'd recommend, but it can work. How many drains are coming down into the skimmer zone? Four or more?

Originally Posted by Midnight

Do you have a link where one could purchase the fish grabber? I don't recall, did you use any live rock or is it just the ceramics? could be a complete lack of the right bacteria that is allowing the cyano to grow. Many people have noted being able to fight back cyano in a new tank by adding bacterial specimens from different sources.

Got it from a nearby LFS, I believe it's made by Aquarium systems, sorry don't have a link to it.
I used Ceramics and dried LR as my LR from my previous tank rottened in the holding barrel. however I did start my sump 4-5 months before starting the tank and seeded it with a couple of LR from my old tank. I also loaded the sytems with MB7 and Prodibio Biodigest when I started it and I'm doing another bacteria loading phase now using MB7 Biodigest and Zeobac. What I'm also worried about is that my sand was cleaned (not sure if it still contained some die off that caused the cyano) it also hasn't been seeded with microlife so far so I'm trying to catch bristleworms and bristle starfish from the frag tank to seed it.

Originally Posted by melev

That thing is neat. Let's see a few pictures of the addition gizmo.

Do you treat for Cyano, or do you turn off the lights again for three days? Either way, it's always nice when the tank is cyano free.

MH 2 hours a day and corals are burning? Are you sure is it light related? There are other things that could be attributed to it, like fish nipping, alkalinity spikes, and vitamin C dosing. It's hard to imagine 2 hours of light being enough to burn corals, honestly. If you wanted to add a little shade material over the tank for a brief duration, that could help if it really is intense lighting. Did you measure PAR? Or could a bulb be cracked, exposing the corals to UV radiation?

Its made by aquarium systems if I remember correctly.


As for the Cyano I'll just wait and see if the added flow will make a difference and I'm currently loading the sytem with bacteria if that will fail I guess I'll just do a 3 days lights off again.

Got 4 rows of T5s on the tank running for 6-8 hours and 2 hours of halide every day. most frags were in teh frag tank under 6x54W halides at 4 inches from water level burning for 8 hours a day. most except the ones under the racks or in the corners were getting a par of 150-250 for SPS and 100-150 for LPS and soft corals so they weren't really in low light. in the Dt they are getting similar or only a bit more par but still I'm seeing some light burns especially on LPS where I can see a burn line following the rocks shade. couple of frags have shown a dry skin before shedding the skin and I presumed it was also from light burn. corals have had a very slow acclimation during the move from the frag tanks to the Dt as they spent a week in a temp tank where they reecived a couple of dips. Tank temp did shoot a bit high (up to 82 ) for a couple of weeks before I installed the chiller. not sure if this could have caused it. no alk spikes but my alk did slowly drop to 6.5 before I raised it to 8 over the course of a couple of weeks. Ca was at 450 adn dropping to 420 my Mg was on the low side 1180 and I'm slowly upping it. nitrates and phophates are 0. As for the bulb cracking I doubt its the case as its happening under the 3 bulbs and I also have a UV protection glass under the bulbs, Double ended so not sure if a cracked bulb would still release UV?

Do you have a link where one could purchase the fish grabber? I don't recall, did you use any live rock or is it just the ceramics? could be a complete lack of the right bacteria that is allowing the cyano to grow. Many people have noted being able to fight back cyano in a new tank by adding bacterial specimens from different sources.

That thing is neat. Let's see a few pictures of the addition gizmo.

Do you treat for Cyano, or do you turn off the lights again for three days? Either way, it's always nice when the tank is cyano free.

MH 2 hours a day and corals are burning? Are you sure is it light related? There are other things that could be attributed to it, like fish nipping, alkalinity spikes, and vitamin C dosing. It's hard to imagine 2 hours of light being enough to burn corals, honestly. If you wanted to add a little shade material over the tank for a brief duration, that could help if it really is intense lighting. Did you measure PAR? Or could a bulb be cracked, exposing the corals to UV radiation?

Thanks Marc,
The Fry shot is one of my favorite shots ever, used my 50 mm on a couple of extension tubes and had not tripod on hand so I'm very happy with the result.
The Fish adder is a pre requisite when you want to move fish in the presence of RAed (the guy in the middle on the first shot) he's a Fish addict and does not agree to the use of nets when moving fish (skin and eyes abrasions, risk of fish spines getting caught int he netting, an additional shock for the fish being introduced when it's just bumped in the new tank...) so had to get me one of those and I must confess that it's much easier to catch the fish as they don't see it coming, even my 6 years old was able to catch the fish from the sump and take them up to the tank.
Currently the tank also has some corals in and a big batch of corals will be moved in in a few days (update on the way!!!) I'm still struggling with some cyano on the sand and some slimy algae on the macro alga int eh fuge for some reason, also struggling with some light burns on many corals moved in although my halides are only on for 2 hours per day and I've raised the lights rather high!!! Light acclimation is proving very difficult. My parameters are spot on so far and I will be adding some more fish when I get my hands on the fish on my list.

Thanks for the nice update, Maroun. I've been wondering how it was going and where you were at this stage. That's a great shot of the fire shrimp fry!

Tell us about your livestock add-er - I've not seen that before and it looks interesting.

Congratulations. That's exactly what I did with my own, and it yielded great results. The easiest coral to propagate, even after death!

Thanks, Baker And Midnight

That's awesome, you are finally getting to see the fruits of all your labor. The tank looks amazing.

beautiful tank, i really like the stand

Got them Custom made in Riff Sytem in Germany and shipped them to Lebanon.

Do you mind me asking where?

That was purchased.