Not really New, 20 Year hiatus so probably

[The Plummer]

I've been lurking here for about a year now, so I think it's high time I make an introduction.

First let me tell you about my first experience in this hobby. Way back in 1990, I purchased a 55 Gal. tempered glass aquarium. I was living in a small two story town house, and decided to cut a hole in the wall under the stair case. I framed around the tank like a picture frame. Worked pretty good, as I was able to use the staircase as a fish room. I installed a sink and whatnot.

This was during the heyday of wet/dry filters. I purchased a custom made HOB bio-filter (there was a guy in my small town that was manufacturing these and I got his prototype).

The first chamber was a heater box, then a pre-filter, below that a chamber for a Carbon bag, then a small wooden air stone protien skimmer, then to a trickle chamber, where I used Orange rings, blue bio-balls then the old fake coral stars for ammonia and nitrite removal. The last chamber was the return pump area.

I purchased a Hagan 650 pump, but alas it was too large to fit inside the sump, so I drilled two holes in the side of the sump and installed 3/4 bulkheads, then I cut down a 40 gal Rubbermaid trash can and had about 35 Gal. sump. I added another Hagan 650 powerhead.

This was a Fish Only tank, I kept a lionfish, clown trigger, bursa trigger, niger trigger and many other fish including large angels.

I always suffered a tremendous Nitrate issue (go figure), and the aquarium was always plagued by hair algea and red slime algea. I maintained about 80 lbs of Dry coral, and used about an inch of crushed coral for substrate.

I had a magnum 350 cannister filter, that I used both for polishing the water and extra carbon. On the magnum I had a VERY old school 18" long UV sterilizer (the kind where the water actually comes in contact with the bulb.

I didn't know to test for Phosphates, Calc, or magnesium. Pre internet days for me.

After about four years, I moved, broke down the aquarium and have been packing it around for the last nearly 20 years.

My daughters 10 and 12 have been begging me for years now to set the aquarium up again, but I dreaded all the maintanence and expense involved.

About a year ago, I found this site and started studying.

My first revelation that I found was that Wet/dry filters suk. for the same reasons that I was having issues with. I learned that the answer was live rock, and live sand. Then read the debates about DSB's and their issues.

Through lots of ruminating and finding the thread about the 5 Gal Remote Deep Sand bed, I decided that I would try this hobby again, as I really enjoy just watching the animals do their thing, my kids are thrilled.

I didn't have a stand when I purchased the aquarium as I had made a custom shelf inside the fish room for it so I took one of my daughters old dressers (you know the ugly white ones), painted it piano black and re-installed the white hardware. I think it looks pretty cool (that's all that really matters, right). I beefed up the dresser with bracing under the top, and installed a 5th central foot, had to shorten the top center drawer to make this happen.

Due to budget constraints, I chose to go at this as low budget as possible and try to re-use as much of the old equipment as possible.

I removed the bio-balls from the HOB filter, and now have a huge chamber for carbon and phosphate remover.

One of the discharge bulkheads goes to a 5 Gal bucket with two 3/4 bulkheads mounted, pointing down, through the lid, so as to avoid having to distort the bucket sides or get uniseals. My first attempt at this failed, as the intake blew much of the extra fine sugar (aragonite) sand all over the bucket and out into the old Rubbermaid sump.

Ok time for a re-design. I took the intake bulk head and screwed a 3/4 PVC 90 into the bulkhead and glued a 1"X1"x3/4" tee to the 90 in a horizontal fashion. I added 5 lbs of larger aragonite rock to the top of the sand to hold down the sand. That works beautifully. I can burp any nitrate gas out of the bucket as it's mounted in the lid instead of the side.

I'm also re-using the 80 lbs of dry rock (probably has phosphate issues) but I'll try to mitigate that with phosphate remover.

I've added about 9 lbs of live rock (2 rocks) to seed the 80 lbs of dry, and I'm using about 1" of Black Aragonite sugar sand for the substrate.

The Magnum 350 did not survive the storage so I'm not using any other type of pumps other than the Hagen 650's. Niether did the UV sterilizer, I can't get it to work, nor can I find a bulb that will work in it.

I have two percula's in the tank now and just installed the live rock 4 days ago. The entire aquarium has been running for nearly two months. I used a dead minnow to cycle the tank before the perculas came to be.

I had one issue during cycling where the water got cloudy, then cleared. I've not had a algea bloom to date.

I've got zero ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates. I have between .2 and .4 ppm phospate and my ph is (perfect, says the LFS that tested it), whatever that means.

Again, staying on the theme of budget, none of my old flourescent light fixtures are working (lots of rust internally), so I purchased a 4' LED shop light from Lowe's for $70.00. It is a 40 watt consumption, and puts out a whopping 3200 Lumens, at 4,000 K color temp.

After the third day with the live rock, the dollar plant is already showing new growth.

Any thoughts on anything, such as UV Sterilizer, internal powerheads, blue actenic LED's to enhance the White light.

I also have a idea regarding the Remote DSB. since I have a 35 Gal. sump, tall garbage can, I thought about putting another 5 gal bucket full of sugar sand inside with the lid off, and seed it with live sand and pods. Figuring the pods would migrate into the aquarium and hopefully support a psychodelic Mandrin. I had one years ago, but he wiped out my pod population in about a week then did not survive.

I'd like to duplicate the semi-aggressive fish that I had before, with the addition of live rock.

Any thoughts or questions?

Thanks for your input in advance.

 

[thegrun]

Welcome back to the hobby and to Reef Central! I took a 15 year break myself when our kids were young, as you have read, just about everything we used to do has been improved upon. I do worry a little about your LED shop light due to its color of 4K which is very close to the algae sweet spot as far as growth. For that reason most of us use something in the 10-20K range. Blue supplement will give the light a better look but will not change the spectrum of light your shop light is emitting. Time will tell, but I am concerned you may have a algae problem in your future. I'm not a big UV sterilizer advocate, there are plenty of other things to spend your money on (which I'm sure you have noticed). Hydor Koralia powerheads are great low budget pumps for in tank flow. It sounds like you are handy at building things, you could save a lot of money if you build your own LED lighting (or at least the supplement blue lighting if your shop light works out). Best of luck with the new tank.

 

[The Plummer]

Thanks for the reply thegrun.

Regarding the color temp on the light. Correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't a higher color temp still emit all the lower color temp as well? If so, wouldn't adding atennics and or UV lights give me the whole spectrum necessary to duplicate natural sunlight, or am I confused? I'm a plumber by trade not an electrician, I just pretend I know what I'm doing there. About all I really understand about electricity is "don't stand in water while fooling with hot electricity. So I probably need to school myself in the lighting dept.

How much in tank flow is necessary for live rock? Would two pumps (one on each end at the back lower portion work. I'm not too keen on looking at all the hardware, I'd try to make them less obvious behind some rock work.

Is my protein skimmer going to be adequate if I use two stones and push them with an old whisper 1000? The skimmer market is too confusing for me to feel confident in a off the cuff purchase here.

I e got a million more questions but my thumbs are getting sore.

 

[ramseynb]

Lights, especially LEDs will peak at a certain temperature. So a metal halide light that's 20k will provide other spectrums but the "bluer" end of the spectrum will be higher. This is exaggerated with LEDs. An LED that has a color temp of 4k will only provide that spectrum. That's why most LEDs for reef tanks have multiple led colors (cool white, blue, royal blue, etc.). If your light is an led light and is 4k, it's not going to work for coral. Even for fish it'd be awfully yellow and would likely cause undesirable algae growth.

 

[ramseynb]

For flow in your tank, you probably want about 10-20 times turnover per hour. If you're going to do fish only, it's less of a concern. Most people have a return pump that pushes a desired amount through their sump, then use powerheads for any additional flow in the tank.

For your protein skimmer, I wouldn't be discouraged with the new technology. Just get an in sump or external venturi style skimmer. The problem with using air stones is it's not nearly as efficient and the air stones can clog over time. That's my two cents away way. Welcome back though! A lot has changed.

 

[The Plummer]

Update,

I'm really pleased with the progress of this project. The adaptation of my old technology to new methods is really jelling well.

I can't seem to get the air stone skimmer to work, it's just not pulling any skimmate out of the water. Really odd though, phosphates continue to drop. I just have 1 bag of phos-sorb laying in the wet/dry portion of the HOB. When I started testing for phosphate, I was neatr 4 ppm, 10 days later, .20ppm, and 2 days ago, .1ppm.

I have a small diatom and green algae bloom. No worries though, just going through a case of the uglies. The dollar plant growth has dwindled considerably. I've gotten a small outbreak of red slime and green slime algae, but its not spreading.

One live rock had an infestation of aphasia.

Since I put the clown in 2 weeks ago, I've tested at least every other day and ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are undetectable.

A 10 days ago I added one more clown and the live rock seed. I observed no increase in ammonia, and one reading of just a touch of nitrite.

Since the discovery of apraxia, and the critters in the LR constantly pushing out detritus, I decided to add a small clean up crew.

Friday, I added a very small peppermint shrimp ( for apraxia removal and scavenging), a skunk shrimp (for fish cleaning and scavenging), two algae eating snails, and a yellow tang( to pick at the red algae.

So far, so good. PH 8.2, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, all zero. Phosphate steady at .1ppm. Calcium tested at 400ppm (I've boosted that to 500 with aquavitro calcification & Kent essential elements).

I have not done a water change yet nor have I cleaned the sand.

At 5am the next morning, all but two aptasia were gone, the tang had 4 spots of Ick. Three hours later, the tang was eating and the ick was no longer visible.

Left for most of the day, upon coming home, all aptasia appears to be gone. The tang has reeked havoc on the red Alger, the snails are eating good, the skunk and tang are working well together, and the tang is FAT. Clowns are playing nicely.

One thing, yesterday morning my daughter pointed to a small white caterpillar looking thing on the sand. I can't find a picture of anything like it on the net, I'm concerned if its good or bad, any idea what it is?

Another concern about phosphates, since I have 60 lbs of new aragonite and no working skimmer, what are the odds that the aragonite is soaking up the phosphate?

I wanted to by some macro algae from the LFS, for phosphate exportation and free feeding, but she didn't have any and none of her customers keep any now. Anybody in the St. Louis, MO area got some they would part with?

I also have purchased a coral beauty, but the LFS didn't want to let it go yet as she wanted to QT it for a while, I figure by next week I should be ready for it, if it survives QT.

Looked into Korilia power heads, not in the budget just yet. Still can't find a skimmer that I want to use. I do not want an in sump at all. Might do a HOB, but would prefer a in line, but cannot find one, particularly to skim all water before it goes into the bucket DSB. Any thoughts on type or brands to look for.

Any more thoughts or things to look out for?

 

[The Plummer]

Update, coral beauty developed ich. I decided to try the tank transfer method. Tomorrow will be the last transfer before going into a ten gallon for the remaining 9 weeks fallow time for the DT. I wish I had studied this form of quarantine before I started. I remember the bouts of ich from years ago. Copper treatments never really worked for me. Hypo seems too touchy, so the TTM is the only option. So far so good. All four fish seem happy and hungry. The CB wasn't eating prepared food, only picked at the rock, now he eats flake, dried brine and seaweed salad. No ich cyst has been visible since the second transfer.

Question, I have a 6 gal with a small HOB, that I put 8 oz miricle mud in the bottom and cycled with a frozen shrimp tail, ammonia is gone, but nitrites are off the scale. Friday is the day to move the fish to QT For 9 more weeks. If I still have nitrates sky high, should I do a large WC. And place the two clowns in there and monitor for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. Or can the clowns handle nitrite.

My 10 gal tank is still showing a small amount of ammonia. I know prime will solve that, but I'm not seeing any nitrite yet. Shouldn't I be since the ammonia is falling?
The ten has the same type HOB, without miricle mud, but 2" sugar sand.

How am I going to keep the tang and CB alive for 9 more weeks?