bio-load questions

[Pico1]

In my 55 gallon FOWLR I currently have 4 blue-green chromis, 1 yellow tang, 1 royal gamma, 1 lawnmower blenny, and 1 small maroon clown. I will be making the change to a reef once my halides arrive in the mail. I currently am using lots of live rock ind the display and bio-balls in the sump for biological filtration. I will be taking out the bio-balls and putting a fuge in their place. Should I make the swich all at once or should I remove the bio-balls over a long period of time before adding the fuge to help keep bacteria levels in check?

 

[pepe.king.prawn]

if you have at least ~50lbs of LR you can probably safely remove them all at once.

 

[Pico1]

yeah i have at least 50 lbs.

 

[Fragmented]

I removed mine all at once with no problems. I replaced it with cheato. I keep a light on it 24/7.

 

[Pico1]

I heard that it can throw off your ph if you keep the fuge light on 24/7 and that cheato needs a dark period to grow properly. correct me if i'm wrong

 

[Fragmented]

It has corrected my PH problems. No big drops anymore. It does seem to slow the growth of the cheato, but my sump space is small. I do feed cheato to my tang every so often and it doesn't even put a dent in it. I'm in the process of expanding my system to include a much larger refugium. This is just a temporary fix for me until my project is finished.

 

[pepe.king.prawn]

This is correct, as with nearly all plants, they have evolved to incorporate a dark period into their biological activities.

 

[Pico1]

ok I made the switch. I will be getting cheato from John today. Here is the pic of my skimmer/fuge. Sorry about the bad pic quality I was in a hurry.

[/IMG]

 

[robertloop]

Hey pico.. You and I have very simalar tanks. With the fuge you will be fine in the bio load. I also have a tang and as you already know, they are eating and pooping machines. AS he gets bigger there will be more load... A deep sand bed fuge will be your savior for nitrate problems. Here's a pic of what I have done with a 55g reef and halides. When you start growing sps and such, things will start getting really intersting. I dont have a calcium reactor.....

And my tang....

 

[Pico1]

very nice tank robert! After I took the pic of the fuge I also added some cheato. What bulbs are you running on your MH? Also I was wondering if you would be willing to sell me a frag of those brown button polyps with the green centers at the may MARS meeting?

 

[robertloop]

Sure... I have alot of palythoas. Three different species of em. (green button polyps) I'll post pics later tonight........ Let me know which ones you like. 5 bucks or a beer will suffice. I also have some nice A.nana and blue tip stag horn for sale. 15$ each. 25 if you want a larger piece of the A.nana. If your interested in trying some SPS right off the bat. If you want to start off with some other softies I have some other cool softie stuff as well.

I am running 2 36" HO T-5s. 1 175W 10,000K XM. All my acroporas under that one.... and on the other side a 400W 10KK XM. The 400w is over kill so I only run it 4hrs a day. Its waiting for me to upgrade the tank size! :lol: