Update:
Last year has been interesting. Highlights:
1) Homemade turf scrubbers... 3 Of them. Grew lots of algae. In theory were great. In reality where tons of problems. I had 3 giant scrubbers and together they could not pull as much nutrient out of my system as a good protein skimmer, carbon dosing, and filter socks.
Yes, I know the scrubbers are more natural, leave more food in the water, ect. The reality is they cost alot to build and real ones eat ALOT of electricity to work correctly. Each unit was pulling 250 watts with pump and lights. Thats 750 watts. I had pods galore.... and a freak'n mess in my tank.
I'm back to the skimmer and socks. Still pulling out massive bags of slime daily.
2) Sand sucks. Bad. All 800 lbs in the main tank solidified. I mean concrete. Like I had to take a hammer INTO the tank and pound away for hours to get it out. One of the local reef guys and I spent 3 8 hour days removing 800 lbs of sand from my main tank and 80 lbs from my frag tank.
I will never EVER run sand again. I mean it. What a mess. The gunk that had built up that could not be removed was insane. Ugh.
I also removed all of live rock from my sump. I re-arranged all my live rock in my tank so its more of a reef wall with jutting peninsulas. I am currently drying out about 200 lbs of spare live rock on my patio
3) Had Avast Marine custom design and manufacture a massive skimmer head cleaner for me. Its like their production models, but bigger with an added carbon ring. It drains into their off the shelf 5 gallon locker ring. Its simply awesome. No more overflows. No more stink. No more carbon in pantyhose on my lid. Thank you Avast Marine!
Oh i also bought their flat kit for top off and have a giant solid carbon reactor on order.
4) In a moment of weakness bought a dragonette for my daughter at a local fish shop while i was in there with her buying frozen food. Big mistake. Its not copperable or quarantine-able. It cant get Ich right? Yea but it sure as hell can carry it.
Welcome to 50+ fish deaths. After all the quarantining I did it was all for naught. Only things that survived was a Scopas Tang, Yellow Tang, Naso Tang, Mystery Wrasse, 1 purple fire fish, and a Blue Tang.
Broke my heart. Also browned out every coral as I struggled with the massive bio die off. It was bad. The stench was bad. The work to clean up the stench was bad. I lost a few colonies of coral bigger than basketballs. The nutrient influx and then me digging out the sand to get rid of it and the coral out of the water caused some to bleach. I'm still nursing them back.
5) Red flatworms (Planaria). Oh the joys. I've always had a spare one here or there... must of came on my initial live rock. Had a bloom of them once in my fuge.. no big deal. Now They are starting to get scary in numbers in my display. Its not BAD yet, but bad enough I'm starting to get worried. They exploded in growth after the ich die off and the sand removal. I'm sure there is alot of rock shedding that's going on and they are eating it. They are also eating any coral flesh that goes necrosis.
I added a 6 line and a Melanurus today. I'm hoping they can keep it under control. There are no single concentrations that are enough to siphon off... but are just wide spread. If it gets bad I'll use the eXit but I'd rather not. I'm hoping the nutrients subside and the 2 wrasses eat enough so that it all resolves itself.
6) Flow. Because my acrylic is 1.5" I'm limited in my flow options. Vortechs won't work. Tunzies for the amount of flow I needed were silly expensive. I ordered one to try and I was very disappointed with the flow and the build quality for the price.
I started out originally with 4 Hydor Magnum 8's that were not controllable. (Along with my 4 returns that have nozzels from the sump) I went online and ordered very strong rare earth magnets to make them stick to my acrylic. I eventually upgraded these to 6 of the 12 v models with 2 controllers. I feel that the pumps themselves are great for the price. I also feel like the controllers are complete garbage. They use a cooling fan that sucks in warm salt air. The electronics inside are not protected in any way. The controllers last my about 9 months to 11 months before they croak.
3 weeks ago I ordered a Hydrowizard from Germany. As far as I know I'm the first in the states to own a model 63. I installed it Monday. All 6 hydors came out. Its hard to put in words what the flow is like from the pump. If you have ever gone diving on a reef and watch the flow straight-line and wave-crest its the best way to describe its straight flow and wave flow modes.
The one pump pushes WAY more water than my 6 Magnum 8's. I am not able to get straightline flow over 70% without causing damage to my lps. at 10 inches under water at 50% it'll vortex with a water spout the size of a pop can. I have it about 16 inches down 1/3rd off the back wall pointing down the long (10 foot) side of the tank. It causes a natural gyre flow around the tank down the back wall then around and back up the front wall.
The fish love it. They pop out of the rock get in the flow and surf all day long. Nothing sticks under the rocks and stuff exploded out of them the first day I installed it.
Wave mode has been an issue. I've only tried once and succeeded in creating a standing wave that was fountaining gallons of water out the top of my tank. I need to speed an afternoon with it playing with it to see what I can do.
Btw the unit is gorgeous. Solid black anodized controller with touch screen mounted into what looks like teak wood. Separate large power supply and the pump itself. So far I'm very happy.
7) Plans. I need to organize the frag tank along with all my dry goods. I have a bunch of dry goods that I'm not using that I should sell off. I'm going to build an acrylic insert for my sump that holds 4 ringed filter bags. It'll have a compartment that all dirty water enters into that overflows into the filter bag compartment. This is for noise reasons... water flow needs to exit under water then flow over to rid of bubbles. So it'll flow over into the bags and down into a larger chamber that holds my skimmer pump and my soon to be solid carbon reactor. My skimmer will sit just on the other side in the main sump. All water flow from fuge, frag, carbon reactor and main tank will go into the first compartment to re-flow through the bags. Only the skimmer will output into the main sump along with the carbon reactor. There will be an overflow to the main sump as I'll push more water than myn skimmer will most likely handle.
Also, right now my fuge flows down to my frag and then down to the sump. I'm going to separate that. Having the fuge flow to the frag sounded great on paper. Terrible in practice. Little bits of cheato break off and take hold in it all the time... along with the giant crop of bubble algae I'm growing in it.
Also going to build a manifold with a single pump for everything but the main tank return (for the sump). Right now I've got like 5 pumps in the sump.
I'll still have lots of pumps like mixing and moving but the always on ones need to be consolidated. cleaning 5 pumps every 6 months sucks.
If I were to do it again I'd do a lot differently
Mainly being I'd do what MRC does and design a large chambered sump (like I'm building) along with 2 giant parallel pumps that run EVERYTHING. Its the smartest way to go on a large tank from ease of use and power draw. Plus if one fails it'll still gimp along till you get the spare.
Oh and if you couldn't tell I'm planning on switching from liquid carbon dosing to solid for the ease of use and the upkeep requirements.
Oh also I'd go with an external skimmer and make the sump smaller. Right now my skimmer takes up a huge portion of the sump and its really wasted space.
That's about it. There has been much more but I've probably forgotten a lot of it.
Last year has been interesting. Highlights:
1) Homemade turf scrubbers... 3 Of them. Grew lots of algae. In theory were great. In reality where tons of problems. I had 3 giant scrubbers and together they could not pull as much nutrient out of my system as a good protein skimmer, carbon dosing, and filter socks.
Yes, I know the scrubbers are more natural, leave more food in the water, ect. The reality is they cost alot to build and real ones eat ALOT of electricity to work correctly. Each unit was pulling 250 watts with pump and lights. Thats 750 watts. I had pods galore.... and a freak'n mess in my tank.
I'm back to the skimmer and socks. Still pulling out massive bags of slime daily.
2) Sand sucks. Bad. All 800 lbs in the main tank solidified. I mean concrete. Like I had to take a hammer INTO the tank and pound away for hours to get it out. One of the local reef guys and I spent 3 8 hour days removing 800 lbs of sand from my main tank and 80 lbs from my frag tank.
I will never EVER run sand again. I mean it. What a mess. The gunk that had built up that could not be removed was insane. Ugh.
I also removed all of live rock from my sump. I re-arranged all my live rock in my tank so its more of a reef wall with jutting peninsulas. I am currently drying out about 200 lbs of spare live rock on my patio
3) Had Avast Marine custom design and manufacture a massive skimmer head cleaner for me. Its like their production models, but bigger with an added carbon ring. It drains into their off the shelf 5 gallon locker ring. Its simply awesome. No more overflows. No more stink. No more carbon in pantyhose on my lid. Thank you Avast Marine!
Oh i also bought their flat kit for top off and have a giant solid carbon reactor on order.
4) In a moment of weakness bought a dragonette for my daughter at a local fish shop while i was in there with her buying frozen food. Big mistake. Its not copperable or quarantine-able. It cant get Ich right? Yea but it sure as hell can carry it.
Welcome to 50+ fish deaths. After all the quarantining I did it was all for naught. Only things that survived was a Scopas Tang, Yellow Tang, Naso Tang, Mystery Wrasse, 1 purple fire fish, and a Blue Tang.
Broke my heart. Also browned out every coral as I struggled with the massive bio die off. It was bad. The stench was bad. The work to clean up the stench was bad. I lost a few colonies of coral bigger than basketballs. The nutrient influx and then me digging out the sand to get rid of it and the coral out of the water caused some to bleach. I'm still nursing them back.
5) Red flatworms (Planaria). Oh the joys. I've always had a spare one here or there... must of came on my initial live rock. Had a bloom of them once in my fuge.. no big deal. Now They are starting to get scary in numbers in my display. Its not BAD yet, but bad enough I'm starting to get worried. They exploded in growth after the ich die off and the sand removal. I'm sure there is alot of rock shedding that's going on and they are eating it. They are also eating any coral flesh that goes necrosis.
I added a 6 line and a Melanurus today. I'm hoping they can keep it under control. There are no single concentrations that are enough to siphon off... but are just wide spread. If it gets bad I'll use the eXit but I'd rather not. I'm hoping the nutrients subside and the 2 wrasses eat enough so that it all resolves itself.
6) Flow. Because my acrylic is 1.5" I'm limited in my flow options. Vortechs won't work. Tunzies for the amount of flow I needed were silly expensive. I ordered one to try and I was very disappointed with the flow and the build quality for the price.
I started out originally with 4 Hydor Magnum 8's that were not controllable. (Along with my 4 returns that have nozzels from the sump) I went online and ordered very strong rare earth magnets to make them stick to my acrylic. I eventually upgraded these to 6 of the 12 v models with 2 controllers. I feel that the pumps themselves are great for the price. I also feel like the controllers are complete garbage. They use a cooling fan that sucks in warm salt air. The electronics inside are not protected in any way. The controllers last my about 9 months to 11 months before they croak.
3 weeks ago I ordered a Hydrowizard from Germany. As far as I know I'm the first in the states to own a model 63. I installed it Monday. All 6 hydors came out. Its hard to put in words what the flow is like from the pump. If you have ever gone diving on a reef and watch the flow straight-line and wave-crest its the best way to describe its straight flow and wave flow modes.
The one pump pushes WAY more water than my 6 Magnum 8's. I am not able to get straightline flow over 70% without causing damage to my lps. at 10 inches under water at 50% it'll vortex with a water spout the size of a pop can. I have it about 16 inches down 1/3rd off the back wall pointing down the long (10 foot) side of the tank. It causes a natural gyre flow around the tank down the back wall then around and back up the front wall.
The fish love it. They pop out of the rock get in the flow and surf all day long. Nothing sticks under the rocks and stuff exploded out of them the first day I installed it.
Wave mode has been an issue. I've only tried once and succeeded in creating a standing wave that was fountaining gallons of water out the top of my tank. I need to speed an afternoon with it playing with it to see what I can do.
Btw the unit is gorgeous. Solid black anodized controller with touch screen mounted into what looks like teak wood. Separate large power supply and the pump itself. So far I'm very happy.
7) Plans. I need to organize the frag tank along with all my dry goods. I have a bunch of dry goods that I'm not using that I should sell off. I'm going to build an acrylic insert for my sump that holds 4 ringed filter bags. It'll have a compartment that all dirty water enters into that overflows into the filter bag compartment. This is for noise reasons... water flow needs to exit under water then flow over to rid of bubbles. So it'll flow over into the bags and down into a larger chamber that holds my skimmer pump and my soon to be solid carbon reactor. My skimmer will sit just on the other side in the main sump. All water flow from fuge, frag, carbon reactor and main tank will go into the first compartment to re-flow through the bags. Only the skimmer will output into the main sump along with the carbon reactor. There will be an overflow to the main sump as I'll push more water than myn skimmer will most likely handle.
Also, right now my fuge flows down to my frag and then down to the sump. I'm going to separate that. Having the fuge flow to the frag sounded great on paper. Terrible in practice. Little bits of cheato break off and take hold in it all the time... along with the giant crop of bubble algae I'm growing in it.
Also going to build a manifold with a single pump for everything but the main tank return (for the sump). Right now I've got like 5 pumps in the sump.
I'll still have lots of pumps like mixing and moving but the always on ones need to be consolidated. cleaning 5 pumps every 6 months sucks.
If I were to do it again I'd do a lot differently
Mainly being I'd do what MRC does and design a large chambered sump (like I'm building) along with 2 giant parallel pumps that run EVERYTHING. Its the smartest way to go on a large tank from ease of use and power draw. Plus if one fails it'll still gimp along till you get the spare.Oh and if you couldn't tell I'm planning on switching from liquid carbon dosing to solid for the ease of use and the upkeep requirements.
Oh also I'd go with an external skimmer and make the sump smaller. Right now my skimmer takes up a huge portion of the sump and its really wasted space.
That's about it. There has been much more but I've probably forgotten a lot of it.
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