Restarting an old 280 build

I am expecting at some point it may be an issue, I am hopeful that having 300 gallons + 92 in the seahorse tank dedicated to growing macroalgae helps me export the additional nutrients when it does release them. I also have the beginning stages of an ATS in the works that will go online in the near future.

The 325 gallon reservoir is constantly recirculating through a large skimmer to help pull waste out of the water. How well will this large body of water do over time?

This entire build is kind of a grand experiment in that regard.
 
Northside Reef said:
I am expecting at some point it may be an issue, I am hopeful that having 300 gallons + 92 in the seahorse tank dedicated to growing macroalgae helps me export the additional nutrients when it does release them. I also have the beginning stages of an ATS in the works that will go online in the near future.

The 325 gallon reservoir is constantly recirculating through a large skimmer to help pull waste out of the water. How well will this large body of water do over time?

This entire build is kind of a grand experiment in that regard.
Click to expand...

I'm finding that an ocassional partial cand bed replacment works great. My problem though is that the original southdown substrate is no longer available so It is slowly changing to a coaser material. If I would have known this from day one I would have scheduled roughly 20% substrate replacement every year from the start.
 
Seahorses are here! But I am not sure if it's the new home or lack of interest, they have not eaten any of the Hikari Mysis I've tried to feed them. Hopefully tomorrow..

Photos:



















 
Sounds like I may have overdone it on cultivating the pod population. I am having a hard time getting the seahorses to eat frozen. They are more interested in hunting. It could be a possible issue once they have decimated that pod population and getting back on frozen.

I did not think of this :(
 
I am hoping to get them back on the frozen once the pods are a lot more scarce. At least they have been trained once to take it so they're just being brats about it right now.

I was looking around the tank last night and for sure it is getting harder to see any pods on the tank walls. I saw an awesome feeding station doing a google search so I am going to build one of those next. So my plan is to get them on a feeding station :)
 
I thought I would share some photos of the newest addition. I have not posted all of the fish I've added they're pretty much your basic fish. I have been running them through the coral QT tank since the main fish QT is a hospital tank while I try to cure a sick fish.

Jason over at Petco got this for me by request. I asked for a small Blue Caribbean Tang (Acanthurus coeruleus) lol I need to be careful what I say around that guy, he absolutely delivers. Here is the new guy: Smallest tang I have ever seen :)





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He is eating fine and looks pretty healthy, but I am going to wait until I have maybe a few chromis to put in the tank with him before I add him to the main. I have added a couple of fish now and this dude is so small I don't want him to get picked on. Here is a LA photo of what he'll grow up to look like:

p-73707-blue-caribbean-tang.jpg
 
Yeah, I don't know if he'll keep the yellow tail or not, the pics I've seen of them they are all blue with beautiful streaking. A school would be amazing. I added a Powder Blue a bit over a week ago, and a Desjardini Sailfin. the Powder is only a couple of inches big and the sailfin maybe the size of a half dollar. I want to add a purple but getting a small one has been difficult. The smallest I have been able to find so far is about 4" and I think that will be too big for my juvenile group I am trying to raise together.
 
Northside Reef said:
Yeah, I don't know if he'll keep the yellow tail or not, the pics I've seen of them they are all blue with beautiful streaking. A school would be amazing. I added a Powder Blue a bit over a week ago, and a Desjardini Sailfin. the Powder is only a couple of inches big and the sailfin maybe the size of a half dollar. I want to add a purple but getting a small one has been difficult. The smallest I have been able to find so far is about 4" and I think that will be too big for my juvenile group I am trying to raise together.
Click to expand...

Good point but still a nice selection of fish.
 
Well feeding the seahorses has been a scary thing to say the least. first they did not want to eat because they were more interested in eating the pods in the tank than the food I was adding. And now just making sure I get enough in there that they'll all eat. I did some google searching on feeder stations. I came across this

ATB-Seahorse-Feeder.jpg


But no amount of searching actually shows where you could buy one :( It looks like a great idea it just does not seem as though it ever made it to the market. so I drew this up:



Here is how it actually came out. The glue is still drying we'll see how it works this weekend and how long it takes to train them to use it. The idea is I will use the tube to get the food in the feeder hopefully the clear tube they will see the mysis dropping down and figure out it is time to eat. once the food is in place I can take the tube back out.





 
Seahorses are so smart lol. I had to give it a go and the glass tube works awesome. I only got two of them to use it tonight but I think with a little refinement to my feeding routine I can get more to start using it.







 
lol well the idea sucked. After a couple days with the feeder. The glass tube worked a little too good. the seahorses see the food but they cannot figure out that it is in a tube and they can't get to it until it's in the dish, so they try to nab the mysis on the way down only to smack their faces into the tube. The tube is no more. The tube attachment at the bottom was removed since it really is not needed if there is no tube.

So basically my feeder station is a bowl with hitching posts that the seahorses do use sometimes or they just go inside the dish and eat. So far I have had as many as four horses in it so I have some work to do in getting them all trained. But this contraption is not needed a regular bowl would have worked just as well.

I now guide (round the horses up) with a pipette and squirt the food into the dish.
 
What about useing a tinted tube that they can see only partly through it? Ny thoughts is that the sea hourses should also have keen sense of smell and when you feed them they smell the food. I know some of fish that normally hade are out eating withon seconds of me adding food to my tank. I believe it is bacause they can smell it or sence the chang in flow as I reduce the powerhead flow at feeding time.
 
Sorry for the lack of updates I will get some new tank shots up this weekend the tanks are looking pretty good. Seahorses are settled in real well. I do still use the feeder dish but for the most part if I see a horse hanging in the back I just squirt some food in his general direction sometimes they head to the dish and eat sometimes they just hang around where they want.

I tried getting the old MR-4 skimmer up and running but I did not have enough power to drive it off my reservoir recirc pump.

01101_30_2013.jpg


So I have been running skimmerless since I set the system up. Even though I have about 300 gallons of water dedicated to growing macro in the shed and the seahorse tank growing a ton in the 92 I know I can't keep filtering the entire system just using macroalgae. It's been fine so far but I finally upgraded the skimmer to a Super Reef Octopus SRO-6000EXT





I got a pretty nice deal on this one used and it is pulling a ton of gunk out already. I think that is one of the benefits to getting it used it was already broke in and within 20 minutes of it running I snapped those pics. Probably 10 minutes to dial it in and one slight modification on the drain line to let me adjust the water level in the unit better and it was off and running.

I am real happy with the skimmer. As mentioned above I will snap some pics of the tank this weekend. The main is looking pretty good with 0 algae problems, but with as much junk as the skimmer is pulling out I think I would have been in for trouble not too far down the road if I would have put off adding one any longer. 6 months no skimmer was probably pushing it. But it does prove the benefits of macroalgae.
 
Awesome setup! Maybe I missed it in the thread, but do you know how much evaporation you are having daily? How much is getting topped off?
 
ctiq21 said:
Awesome setup! Maybe I missed it in the thread, but do you know how much evaporation you are having daily? How much is getting topped off?
Click to expand...

Not that much really I would guess a couple gallons a day. everything except the tanks are covered or at least partially covered and I keep the filter shed pretty cool which also helps. the most evaporation is happening over the main DT and it has not been enough to kick the humidistat over which is set at 30% I finally just turned it on. I expect that to change when I finally get the doors on the hood of course.

Newbie Aquarist said:
Nice pickup on that skimmer. They are some real beasts.
Click to expand...

Thanks :) I was hoping I would be able to use the old MRC-MR-4 but it was not to be :(
 
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