Non-Photosynthetic Coral Ecosystem

[subarcticreef]

Want to share some experiences from a system set up by a friend of mine. He got the idea during a holiday trip to Eilat in Israel. There he observed that in a place in a harbor where fishermen were cleaning their catch there was also an amazing growth of dendros.

Obviously all the biomaterial in the water served as food source for the corals and enabled them to grow like crazy. He then came up with the idea NPC like dendros could help cleaning up an aquarium system.

Currently he has a system going that contains LR, low intensity light, a chaeto sump (he wants to avoid using a skimmer since it may remove nutrients for the NPC) and quite powerful circulation. In this system he keeps well fed predatory fish but he avoids fish that eat pods and small critters since he wants that as food for the corals.

Unfortunately, I only have a limited number of pictures of the tank but I plan to add more after my next visit to it.

But I think that this is a fascinating idea. Predatory fish that generate lots of waste and the NPC to clean up. Curious to hear what other people here may think?

 

[subarcticreef]

Seems to be some problems uploading photos at the moment

 

[subarcticreef]

Another pic

 

[mcgyvr]

Very nice...
There are a few beautiful "non-photosynthetic" systems out there.. Its always good to see someone go in a different direction than the norm..

Also good to here how others are dealing with nutrients and actually avoiding skimmers,etc... on purpose to maintain a more "natural" nutrient level

 

[subarcticreef]

The dendros above spent a couple of months in a traditional SPS/LPS tanks prior to being moved to this system. During that time they looked like mummified strawberries. A couple of days in here and they started expanding.

 

[Leffe Berglund]

The circumstances for creating this tank was a bit special - the tank itself was already in Place in a restaurant, (sad and ugly, performing as a freshwatertank) when the owners asked me if it was possible to convert this into a marine tank? - a 8,5 foot long.1.5f´! wide and a heigth of 4.5´, of which 1´ is reccessed into the floor - not exactly the most convenient when it comes to aquascaping (nor service) - as "frosting on top of the cake" :theres only 4-5" above the waterline to the top,(top serving as a Bar table) there´s no way of placing any equipment outside or above the tank, so all equipment had to be placed within the tank.(I managed to get a smal PEM-pipe for top-of water milled down into the floor)

So it was just clear to me that this can´t be done - so I had to do it!

The only filter option I could think of was a Cheato-algae filter, so I took an old Sander 6´skimmer and cut it in half - dressing it up in artifical styrofoam rocks (cutting away most of the styrofoam to reduce boyancy) put a strainer in just above the pump outlet and placed a bundle of LED glasstubes with leds pointing outward´in the middle and surrounded the tubes with Chaetos - the upper edge of the old skimmer is just under the waterline and crowned with an "heated in shape" overflow-comb - that solved the surface skimming issue.

At the bottom of the tank, there´s a pipingsystem to create a upward flow through the bottom layer, consisting of walnut-sized pebbles, the feeding pump is hidden in one of the hollow reef pillars.

 

[Leffe Berglund]

Main circulation is two Maxspect gyre´s, placed at the bottom in each end of the tank, so togheter with the bottomflow and the algaefilter it comes to just above 10.000gph

 

[Leffe Berglund]

The tank´s been running for about 6months so far, it´s still "under Construction" or "in progress" or any other excuse - but there´ll be many more Azoo´s as soon as they´re in supply

 

[Daddi0]

This is interesting! We are about to set up a 200 gallon eel tank in our garage. This tank will not be able to have all the standard cleaning fish like tangs to keep the algae at bay, so we won't be farming acros and such. Our thought was to do a whole NPS reef. We already have the eel (a 38 inch tessa) and a friend just gave us our first Dendro mother. We will be watching this thread. Now just waiting for the tank to be ready.
Cheers! Mark