100% Aquaculture, Bare Bones SPS Lagoon

Shark.Bait said:
As Karim and Vinny have mentioned, I am not the first one to try this and the bleach kills microorganisms. The idea is that it diminishes the count of bacteria in the water column but doesn't kill them all. The theory is it preferentially kills gram negative bacteria which pretty much makes up most of the coral pathogenic types.

In short, it should help clear detritus slightly and prevent bacteria that are involved with RTN. Bob Stark has proven this concept with his mixed reef, I'd like to apply it to a SPS focused tank and see what happens.
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Hey Shark bait. The sharks are circling! :)
Don't get scared away.
I am honestly curious to see how your system does.
Please keep us posted.
 
I know that you said for better of for worse on dosing the bleach, but now that you found out (in your chemistry thread) that it has very little chance of killing the pathogens like you were thinking and that a skimmer might not be able to remove the organic chlorides that you are creating and they could cause a lot of harm, are you going to dose it anyway? Just curious.

I have seen some successful reefs without forms of nutrient export. The aragonite ends up picking up the slack by binding phosphates until they get full (which can take a year or two). As long as you have a plan for replacing the aragonite or running a lot of GFO, it can work. Nitrate should be no problem if you have enough rock of sand.
 
karimwassef said:
new and controversial ideas are easy to break down.

sometimes, through experimentation, we learn things that are non-intuitive and informs completely different avenues of understanding.

I'm personally not going to add bleach - I feel that everything should have a natural basis on real reefs. UV rays and ozone are the primary "disinfectants" in nature - so I'm going to stick with those for now :D

but I'm very excited to learn through your experimentation.
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Exactly Karim, there's many instances of people scoffing at techniques which later become common place. I'm NOT saying that's the case with bleach, but I've seen success and I'd like to try for myself. I know you've received some of that at your own presentations ;)

I wouldn't bleach my 265g reef! But for me, it'll be some fun to try this on a small scale.

danreefman said:
I like how you stick to your plan. Don't listen to all the chatter. Everytime I listen to people about tank or my business. I head towards failure. Do your thing bro. I'll be following. Nice stand by the way.
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Thank you. There's no problem with people stating their opinion, I look forward to the discussion!



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jda said:
I know that you said for better of for worse on dosing the bleach, but now that you found out (in your chemistry thread) that it has very little chance of killing the pathogens like you were thinking and that a skimmer might not be able to remove the organic chlorides that you are creating and they could cause a lot of harm, are you going to dose it anyway? Just curious.

I have seen some successful reefs without forms of nutrient export. The aragonite ends up picking up the slack by binding phosphates until they get full (which can take a year or two). As long as you have a plan for replacing the aragonite or running a lot of GFO, it can work. Nitrate should be no problem if you have enough rock of sand.
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I don't agree that there's very little chance of bleach oxidizing bacteria in the water. The picture of the bacteria test show a significant difference in waterborne bacteria. It's only one test, but there's many studies available that support this.

The chlorine content added is about .1ppm, with the lowest you'll find in tap water being around .2ppm. So at the moment no, I am not worried about it. However, there are always unknowns, we will see!

There is aragonite, but most of the phosphate/ nitrate control is going to be done through carbon dosing. I really don't want to use GFO but I will if I have to.

Karim's reef is a good example of one with "no" nutrient export, depending on what your definition is.


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How will you be exporting nutrients with carbon dosing with no skimmer? The stuff that you are growing with the carbon will just stay in the tank and be part of the N cycle, again.

You don't believe the chemistry that your bleach will turn into organic chloramines and that organic chloramines don't kill the stuff that you want to kill?

Your test is likely missing the organics that will be there in the water, thus no conversion to organic chloramines.
 
^
always believed that you gotta have skimmer for carbon dosing, to remove the nutrients, and also for aeration for any bacterial blooms that depletes the O2 in the tank
 
oops sorry, he said "dosing and carbon"

i'm guessing he's meaning carbon media rather than carbon dosing.

in that case, good luck!

i believe there's a 0 water change reefing style called Triton, probably worth a little research just for the knowledge if nothing else.
 
jda said:
How will you be exporting nutrients with carbon dosing with no skimmer? The stuff that you are growing with the carbon will just stay in the tank and be part of the N cycle, again.

You don't believe the chemistry that your bleach will turn into organic chloramines and that organic chloramines don't kill the stuff that you want to kill?

Your test is likely missing the organics that will be there in the water, thus no conversion to organic chloramines.
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Export of bacterial biofloc from carbon dosing will be carried out by mechanical filtration, socks and floss in this case. This is much more effective than skimming.


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In other news, some goodies have arrived!
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jda said:
How will you be exporting nutrients with carbon dosing with no skimmer? The stuff that you are growing with the carbon will just stay in the tank and be part of the N cycle, again.

You don't believe the chemistry that your bleach will turn into organic chloramines and that organic chloramines don't kill the stuff that you want to kill?

Your test is likely missing the organics that will be there in the water, thus no conversion to organic chloramines.
Click to expand...


The bacteria generated from carbon dosing assimilate the N and P from the water column and not only can be removed by mechanical filtration, but will also serve as food for coral and other bacteria eating critters which in turn can provide a food source to corals and maybe even fish if the pod population increases. This pathway essentially recycles the inorganic P and N in the water column back into food for fish and corals. As such, less food needs to be added to the tank so there's a mechanism for lowering P and N in the water column.

Carbon dosing in reef aquaria should have been called bioflocculation as it is in the aquaculture industry. There they can control nutrients by putting in less food and have the shrimp or tilapia, as the case may be, take up the slack by eating the detritus formed from adding a carbon source which in aquaculture is usually molasses.

Another source of nutrient depletion from carbon dosing, which doesn't involve a skimmer or even a mechanical filter, is the use of the organic carbon as an energy source for denitrification in the anoxic zones in the tank. Nitrates are lowered without removal of detritus by the dissimilation of nitrate into nitrogen gas which degasses from the aquarium. This is one of the reasons nitrate usually drops proportionately faster than phosphate in a reef tank. Denitrification only lowers nitrate, not phosphate.



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I'm really curious how you make out on this, but I am very intereseted in your way of thining about this. You say

2. I also plan to be away from the tank for some time, so water changes won't be possible. I'm going no skimmer, no water changes, no fuge, no gfo, only dosing and carbon.

You'll be using filter floss and mech means instead of skimmer. If your away form the tank your filters are going to become plugged very fast with carbon dosing, trust me when I was running filter socks on my tank 3 days they would not flow any water.
So your filter becomes a nitrate factory if left too long. A skimmmer actually removes DOC instead of letting them sit in your tank and become a issue.
 
Cheapreef said:
I'm really curious how you make out on this, but I am very intereseted in your way of thining about this. You say



2. I also plan to be away from the tank for some time, so water changes won't be possible. I'm going no skimmer, no water changes, no fuge, no gfo, only dosing and carbon.



You'll be using filter floss and mech means instead of skimmer. If your away form the tank your filters are going to become plugged very fast with carbon dosing, trust me when I was running filter socks on my tank 3 days they would not flow any water.

So your filter becomes a nitrate factory if left too long. A skimmmer actually removes DOC instead of letting them sit in your tank and become a issue.
Click to expand...



I completely agree with you, the mechanical filtration maintenance really needs to be kept up with this tank. The filter socks on this tank aren't the best so my plan is to replace filter floss every few days.

While I'm away I plan to have a friend change out the floss and fill the ato every few days.


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Sorry for the slow updates. School keeps me busy! Here's some pics of the tank ready to go. Picked up some coral too!
ea1db3562f64f844698af1a81b3e68f8.jpg
b32c54d5e019aab0278c9b0205dba1b4.jpg
b26d74afba2191fbdebe24adbf97774b.jpg



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