I intend to do no water changes in a large system.

[CHSUB]

i ran a no water change system in 1999 to about 2003; used wet/dry, skimmer, floss, carbon, chemi-pure, some kind of phosphate reducing stuff, dsb, tons of live rock, and a natureef denitrator; used a diatom filter every week or two and dosed 2 part and other elements....it worked ok; water tested ok, but one day starting having algea problems(cyano and GHA) and started doing waterchanges....tank looked better, corals grow more, everything was better!!

 

[MadReefist]

Now that I repainted the trim on the little tanks I could finally pop them all in for a rough piping schematic:

Forgot to put the mangrove platform back for the photo.

Even though I built one way back I somehow forgot all about coil denitraters. Having most of the stuff already, odds are I'll end up building a tall boy as well to go in with the overkill on the cheap theme.

Here's the mangrove platform tank with rubberized foam inserts:

I think I figured out how to incorporate an overkill ATS area into the mangrove platform, which can use the same lights to light the 84 mangroves and ATS at the same time. I'm thinking use CPVC, and start with a base that wraps around the inside of the box:

I'd like to have removable turf screens (as well as other filter elements) that I can offer for sale pre-conditioned/cycled filter elements for people who want to start tanks with filters ready for action.

So what I'm thinking is have 6 10"x10" screens in an upright grid sticking up thru the middle of the mangrove platform box (with lights on each side):

This would allow me to take screens out and add fresh ones without much affecting the performance of the system.

My challenge is how to effectively pump the water up into the array and have it flow down thru them as desired. I could really use some pointers as I've never dabbled with this technology before.

I got the acrylic box and the foam for free from a 25 year old art studio that was closing last week that was posted on craigslist the day before. It's was literally everything in the place free for the public. It was a madhouse free for all. When I got the box and foam I wasn't sure what I'd do with them, but I knew I could make good use of them somehow. I had to grab for good stuff in a rush and grabbed the box on the way in. I don't know what they used it for. I also got massive stacks of various sized acrylic and polycarbonate sheets, still with the protective film on them. It literally filled the bed of my F150 half way up. A MAJOR score as I use these materials in unrelated equipment I build.

 

[MadReefist]

OK, I can appreciate wanting backup, but I can still see layers of products that really do exactly the same thing, and several that are maintenance heavy, and likely redundant.

DSB + plenum - good idea.
Wet dry tower - redundant - you have all the sand in the top of the dsb.
Mangroves. Redundant, inefficient.

Diatomaceous earth. UV. You have a huge system to generate plankton, but these will remove it 100%. What do you want?

Layers, and layers of chemical media. Some of these need tumbling, and the pellets and zeolites both need a skimmer to export junk. Purigen + chemipure + carbon - pick one of three?

And so on. Wouldn't you be better putting this planning effort to exploring a way to collect NSW to do water changes? At least grossly simplify this. I have a skimmer, and a single reactor on a comparable size system, and apart from adding vodka that's it.

I'm sorry I didn't see your post until now somehow.

84 floating mangroves, and one fat root monster in the DSB shouldn't be too inefficeint I'm hunching. Part of this project is developing a mangrove magic juice and methodology to speed mangroves up. More on that later.

DE: I don't intend to run the DE canister in-line. It will be a low flow feature that cycles from a sump compartment.

UV: In line UV is a must at some point in this system. We'll be collecting wild creatures, and moving them, so quarantining literally everything (for 6 weeks as the RC Ich guide suggests) is an impossibility. I'm thinking of how to clear the line in a way that keeps the main DT clear. Like in the little tanks between it and the UV have all plants, and another with an army of cleaners. I want to be able to switch the return lines from the 2 sumps periodically, so I still have some brain busting on this front.

Wet / Dry Tower (with all the mechanical and chemical medias): This also wont be hooked in line. It's an added water polisher + bio-backup on steroids. Most likely I'll have the UV hooked in-line just before the flow enters chamber one of the sump, where the tower will be rested. The water will still flow thru on thru the sump at this point, where a different pump operates the tower independently. DE, perhaps a denitrifying coil tower would also fit here. The idea is the choicest water possible leaving the sump on the return path, but still allowing benthic plankton from the sump, but the choice DSB plankton still gets to the main DT.

 

[MadReefist]

When I wrote "closed loop system" at the beginning I didn't realize that was a technical term for 'lots of PVC piping everywhere possible'. I wont be doing all that to every tank. The way they connect will be as simple as possible.

And yes I reinforced the floor joices with blocks under the house where these tanks go.

 

[ivans75]

very interesting tagging along and bookmarked!

 

[Dashiki]

Couple of things that jump out to me

Please take no offense

1. Seems like your trying to be cheap in an expensive hobby

2. If you plan on doing this take out the mechanical filtration.

3.The uv is not large enough to kill ich and for this size tank will just help keep water clear. you may be hurting the system by killing beneficials as well.

Ime successful minimal water change tanks are very simple. What you have is complicated. One tank I know is a 265 with 75 gallon sump. He has uv, and a large refugium. Refugium has 6" dsb, calupera, cheato and 40watt uv

I would take a more natural attack and lose all mechanical filters and add an ats.

 

[albano]

Wow...did you ever play a game called 'Mouse Trap'? :eek2:
Seems too complicated, too large, and too much work...I'd recommend doing the water changes!

 

[MadReefist]

What I'm gathering is many people like the natural concepts so much that I should cut out nearly everything chemical/mechanical/etc. I was kind of more expecting more people to advise me not to risk the 'nature run amok' scenario that using wild collected sand / mud / flora / fauna already imposes even with unnatural type checks.

@Dashiki:

I think it's a way overpriced hobby to begin with. Considering the price gouging going on with at every turn ($200 for a 30g sump box, sheesh), I'd like to show it doesn't always have to be like that. Between buying / bartering for used equipment, DIY, FL aquacultured LR, locally (& sustainably) collected whatever-I-can-find-that-works, maximum biological diversity, patience, esoteric plant sciences, brainstorming and frugal practices combined with my procurement skills I intend to prove that a grand system can be achieved 'on-the-cheap'.

I hope to employ scaled-up 'cheap' filtration methods to achieve stability in a system with massive bioload that will be fluctuating. A core element is the DSB that will contain about 100g of sand/etc media. So no I'm not willing to pay $2K to stock the DSB alone with 100g of 'appropriate' offshore collected live sand. For example.

I have a big 15W UV chamber, and a smaller "turbo twist" I intend to hook to the QT. These items, like the jumbo canister, came with the used systems I've acquired the past month. The biggest direct cash item was the 15g x 8 + stand, that we paid $200 for. $35 for the 400+lb. monster 150 DSB tank. Barter of about $400 in equipment and a few hours technical work for the big 120g DT with TONS of extras (including the 45g sump + a 4' $900 light canopy that has 2 MH & 2 PC), and $80 for an extra 120g tank+stand+canopy (nice rounded corners formica) that we're going to fix up and sell with the natural filters pre-matured. About another $400 so far in the other filter elements and parts, that if I follow the advice given so far I'll be sending much of that back. Mangrove platform box = free. Once we've finished the final plumbing, and have pretty much everything on hand that wont have to worry about any big orders to iron out the remaining details, I'll do up a detailed pricing inventory on what it took to get there. I hope the outcome might be considered remarkable.

@Albano:
If you have a better way to hook up 8 tanks and 2 sumps, without spending another $500 on pumps and more on electricity, let me know.

 

[JT3069]

sounds like a good system
but imo it sounds like alot of work ,as others have said the idea would be less maintaince
ur system sounds like a full time job

but that's y it's your system (never know till you try)
best of luck and looking for long term results

 

[SeedlessOne]

First this made me lol.

My live rocks have quite a few aiptasia's emerging now. So I'm planning on chipping them off the rocks, and running them thru a blender for a moment to hopefully mass multiply them.


And seems like are trying to make this hobby more difficult for yourself from this setup, to collectng sand from the beach.


2k for live sand??? Smh. No one uses "live sand" as there is enough life in your live rock to populate dry sand.

 

[MadReefist]

I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel where its uneeded, so if there are other ways to mass populate an aiptasia filter chamber I'm very interested in reading about it.

At the beach, where sand is bountiful and added to as well, there are 3 fractions of sand: totally dry, wet/dry, always submerged. It seems to me that the 2 from the wet zones would offer different diverse & ideal micro and macro organisms. I'd expect the sand here to be conditioned in a way that is more chemically suitible for a marine aquarium than Home Depot "play sand" of unknown origins. That costs about $.50 a gallon maybe. Every other media you'd buy from a LFS or live sand vendor is about $15 per gallon.

Home Debit sand could offer as many potential negative variables, while being totaly DEAD to start. Going the sterile route, now buy bottles claiming to have ideal amounts of ideal bacterias, and wait for them to hopefully populate your medias in a respectable time frame.

I do have choice live rock, nearly as fresh out the open water as you could hope for this time of year. Definitely bacterias in them. But do they offer maximum biodiveristy, in diverse categories? Isn't this dangerous just the same as beach sand could be? More importantly, are they the right bacterias that would be found in mangrove ecosystems? Absolutely not in the latter.

Mangroves absolutely cannot possibly be as effective at what they do nor as fast growing nor as healthy without beneficial symbiotic Mycorrhiza fungi's and related rhizobacteria's. Not to mention the other specialized bacterias you'd find in a mangrove / salt marsh ecosystem.

The live rocks and so-called "live sand" found at virtually every LFS, and even in bottles, are what I'd call sterile at worst and monoculture at best, compared to how the real world works.

The difference in a guy buying mangrove pods and sticking them into a true DSB of 'sterile' sand versus a guy planting them into substrates that contain real world bioactive elements from their natural environments is infinitely astounding. The same should be said of using LFS type materials in building diverse ecosystems of aerobic and anaerobic bacterial populations.

Now it is important to note that this is a new system build, with all of this as the foundation. I do understand the paranoia of people with tanks full of $100 fish and corals then adding these unchecked natural elements.

 

[SeedlessOne]

Dude overthinking this completly. If you want the diversity of your beach sand grab a cup and drop it in your tank. That alone will seed an ENTIRE tank full of dry sand. In time it will be just a diverse as if you used only live sand. Then you dont worry about **** and cigarette butts in your sand. :deadhorse:

 

[Dashiki]

I disagree with it being overpriced.

It is not a hobby for someone who can't afford it. The market sets the price. You may not understand why things that seem to be inexpensive are expensive it usually comes down to trucking and shipping.

That monstrosity of tanks looks terrible but if that's what you need to do to beagle to be in the hobby then go for it.

Taking thins straight from the ocean and into your tanks is a terrible idea.

You will have things in your tank that are bad for your closed environment it can't be avoided. All this for a 120 display tank is just overkill or overthought

 

[aspringer]

Y'all are making my head hurt!

 

[albano]

That monstrosity of tanks looks terrible.

well, now that the 800lb elephant is in the room...+1...too bad you live in Florida, because that sump/fuge/filter system belongs (hidden) in a basement!

 

[Mxx]

I've been pondering the minimal water change route, to some degree as I find the thought that my water quality is continually degrading somehow stressful...

Here is a thread which had some good points on waterchange theory, check out post 42 for instance.

What I've heard in regards to trying to use crushed coral for remineralization is that it quickly gets sealed by biofilm and then ceases to release minerals.

Can you perhaps add crushed coral/aragaonite/dolomite to your RO top-off storage tank instead, so that pure RO water will be able to absorb all the necessary minerals which your corals and others will otherwise deplete?

For no water changes I'd heard ozone is a very good approach as well, as the ozone will oxidise the organic compounds which would otherwise be quite slow to break down and which might accumulate in a detrimental matter in time. And once they're oxidized the compounds are ready to be recycled once more by plants/bacteria/etc. If you're going with a natural plankton approach you would possibly need for instance a large sponge prefilter so you're not sucking up plankton through the water which would be going through the ozone reactor before it is returned to the sump, which is how I thought to approach it.

And for deep sand beds I heard that 4 inches is not deep enough, while deeper than 6" is too much, but that's just what I'd heard.

 

[wayne in norway]

You can get round the additives problem by using a calcium reactor. A carbonate substrate will dissolve to an extent, but not to the degree you need to maintain levels adequately.

Crushed corals don't dissolve in tank water because it's alkaline, and they just don't, Calcium reactors by temporarily acidising the water. Putting crush coral in the topup RO is going to be equally ineffective otherwise everyone would be doing it.

If you're going to run all this thro' ozone as well as UV you will giving up one of the few good points of this system which is hopefully more live plankton. They will be killed. If you're going to go

I'm not saying this is a bad system because I've a tank with expensive corals and fish - I use NSW routinely and think a lot of the risks are overhyped. This to me tho' just sounds like a lot of hardwork and will either run like a dream , or will, and far more likely, be really tricky to get balanced and working for more than a few weeks, especially with so many conflicting components.

I still think the mangroves are hopeless, and that your assumptions on their nutrient takeup wishful thinking, but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

 

[Mxx]

Crushed corals don't dissolve in tank water because it's alkaline, and they just don't, Calcium reactors by temporarily acidising the water. Putting crush coral in the topup RO is going to be equally ineffective otherwise everyone would be doing it.

If you're going to run all this thro' ozone as well as UV you will giving up one of the few good points of this system which is hopefully more live plankton. They will be killed. If you're going to go

Isn't everybody remineralizing their top-up water in some manner? I'm altogether new to this but have come across mention of this a few times already. I suppose it works much better with DI water then it does with RO. Here is somebody's explanation of doing this - http://************.com/2010/02/23/rodi-calcium-carbonate-cartridge/

I wasn't suggesting to use UV or Ozone on the entire return water line, but surely there is a way that you could separate some of the water, run it though the sterilizer or reaction chamber, and then return it to the sump, by using something as simple as a large sponge prefilter on that intake like to let water in but keep the plankton out?

Just trying to sort these issues out myself to plan a good system, hence my personal interest.

 

[burnah]

subscribed to see where this is going. i like the idea of low maintenance, but for me also your system seems complicated. what are you going to keep in the small tanks? sorry if you already answered that but i could not read the entire text.

 

[seapug]

Not to discourage you, but water changes would probably be easier than managing that system.

Have you considered what will happen when your return pump is shut off? You'll probably need a sump larger than your display to accomodate the backsiphon that's going to occur when the pump is shut off. You'll probably have 20 gallons of water traveling through the plumbing alone at any given point. If the "sump" is going to fit in the bottom of that shelf system, it's probably not going to be large enough to handle it. Then you got a big 'ol mess.