Tank of the Month - December 2003

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

all I do to raise salinity is add the sodium, lol that should keep them busy for awhile

We discussed that possibility in my forum once, but the fact that the sodium explodes in a ball of flame when hitting the water discouraged the newbies from trying it. :lol:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=116802

Great tank!

 

[greg s]

1st off...wow the tank of the year!!! lol!!
i love thought of using a actuator on a 3 way
vavle...that gave me all types of surge ideas...1st
question? what type of actuator is it? and how
did you go about setting up the timer relays? ... i have
a friend that gets whole sale pool supplies...and i
want to get this going any help would be great...thank you...
greg

 

[Mojoreef]

Paul B grab the snorkel and come on over..but you got to promise to take your beer bottles with ya.lol

Thanks for the kind words Steve

We discussed that possibility in my forum once, but the fact that the sodium explodes in a ball of flame when hitting the water discouraged the newbies from trying it.

Man Randy!!!! you chemists take the fun out of everything, . Most of the folks of the thread he was linking to were chemists, I thing it wouold keep them busy for a while NaCl just for you

greg s you can go a few ways.You can go three way like I did or go with a standard tee and then just two ways from thier. Thier ones I have a Haywards and come mounted on the threeway valve already. To operate them I used a Random repeat timer. you can hook up many units to this timer and it will operate under any voltage (ac or dc). It will also turn the valves anywhere from 5 seconds to 300 hours. I go mine from a friend but I believe Aquatic eco systems has the same version.

Hope it helps

Mike

 

[greg s]

GREAT THANK YOU!!!

 

[robin]

Mo/Mike. More greetings from the UK. Keep on truckin' me ol' m8. I love to see folk proving the wannabe marine biologists cum chemists wrong. Even the properly qualified resident experts on RC go for each other's throats now and again (no names) . That in itself proves (to me anyway) that there are no set definatives when attempting to replicate nature - even amongst experts.

I've had plenty of stick for running a heat exchanger as a coolant, because of the water waste. This coming from guys that waste as much (if not more) through their RO units, takes the cake! I also get plenty of stick for not having done a water change in over 2 years. I run a 1000 imp gallon setup. My system isn't over loaded with stock. For sure (at that size) it doesn't need to look like a supermarket fruit & veg display! I run a wet self clean skimmer which draws around 10-15% pa of the total water via skimmate and water loss is sorted via 3 RO units and mixed bed DI resin . My only other filtration is LR, a 5 inch dsb and an industrial mechanical filter. I'm certainly no chemist nor am I a biologist, but I can find nothing wrong (in layman's terms) with my water nor can I find any stress amongst the livestock. All I add is Salt, Ca (via the reactor) and Mg...and thats all I've done for 2 years.

Contributions like yours add another dimension to reef keeping, however I have one gripe. I agree RO's ARE a waste of water, but I have to ask how you can justify the cost of polyfilters and phosphate removing resins against the cost of prefilters and membranes unless you have a cheap supply? And...I wonder (bearing in mind why you took your route) what the ecological cost is, in the manufacture of polyfilters and resins?

I've responded to this topic because, whilst I appreciate people who have the nerve to experiment rather than be inflicted with herd mentality (and God only knows this hobby is rife with that), your reasoning confuses me.

 

[Mojoreef]

Hello Robin thanks for the compliments....I think, lol
I am not sure of your exact question but I will give it a shot.
Ok on replicating nature that is one I have learned never to try, lol. I build and maintain a artifical life support system to keep creatures from an alien world alive and healthy.
Ok on the RO. 90% on my water is replaced via kalk (so not a total waste) the balance is direct ro/di
The filters in you ro/di are designed to remove impurities from your tanp water. My use of a phosphate chemical filter is to remove phosphate from my tank water. We as hobbists input a huge quantity of phosphates, if left you will have blooms of the critter that use it (bottom end:algae/bacteria). skimming removes an ammoun but I have found that the chemical filter really helps.

hope I answered your questions.

Mike

 

[antoniomoreno]

IT WOOOOONDERFUL ! CONGRATS....

 

[pncpon]

AWSOME!!!!!

 

[msb27]

Very nice tank. Truley impressive. How long did it take from start to finish? From start of design work to first addition. One more guestion, I love LPS corals, do you have a good picture of that huge frogspawn? I would love to see it.

Thanks for the peek into you water world.

Scott

 

[Capt Crabtabulous]

I agree with all of the other posts, it's beautiful. The tile work on the cabinet is a great touch. One question though, could you explain why you choose to use UV steralizers? I read alot of negative posts about them but I look at your tank and say you're doing something (looks like most everything) right.

 

[Mojoreef]

Thanks folks I do appreciate.

MSB27 It took about a month of building it after work and on the weekends to finish it off, the design...hmmm... not really sure, I help folks design taanks all the time so it wasnt that long..I think???lol . The frog is a beast, its up to 57 heads, I will put a pic below.

mike

 

[Mojoreef]

Capt Crabtabulous, yes thier are alot of different opinions when it comes to UV sterilizers. For me its all about water quality. I use a larger skimmer, uv's, chemical filters to process and keep my water as pure as I can. In reagrds to the uv directly, thier are two trains of thought, one is that I find naturally forming foods such as zoo/phyto/ and such to be of poor quality (phyto is almost pure inorganic phosphate) so I choose to feed my own food mix. When I am finnished feeding the tank, I perfer to clean up the left overs instead of allowing them to rot in the tank (the uv is part of the clean up crew). The second train of thought is that most of the critters that folks are concerned about (pods/plankton and so on) spend most of their time hiding with in the rocks and so on, most of the preditors and nasties spend thier time in the water column hunting said prey. With the UV I can only burn the portion that are in the water cloumn that happen to pass through the UV. If a pod happens to pass throught the UV and is severly damaged or even killed by it, it still does not spend more them .5 of a second once it comes into the tank before it is captured by a fish.

Sorry for the long post and I hope it kinda answered your question.



Mike

 

[Aged Salt]

Mike, could you exspand on cleaning the left-overs[fish poop]? Bob

 

[Mojoreef]

I will try Bob. Not just poop, thats more or less a given (unles you choose to recycle it forever,hehe). When I feed I turn off the closed loops, but after a few minutes I try to get rid of the excess food af much as possible also. With this food usually comes alot of associated bacteria also. As you know my flow is set up to get stuff out and into the sump in the sump the filtration process starts Skimmer= chemical filters=then the uv. The uv portion is kinda like the disinfectant.

Mike

 

[Aged Salt]

Thnx. Mike, sounds good--what's the chemical filtration flow rate?Bob

 

[Mojoreef]

Bob I am not sure of what the ideal flow rate may be but I have my down around 400gph.


MIke

 

[MargaritaMan]

Hey Mike, Good job. It must be the mangroves I sent you. Did you get the Christmas card? On to the next project?

Jeff G.

 

[Reefdude5]

Mike, Amazing tank! Well done! :beer: I was wondering where you get your corals?

 

[robin]

Mike

I still can't fathom out how your top-off water filtration could be financially practical (to this Limey anyway)! I appreciate that Stateside, polyfilters and even possibly phosphate removing resins are cheaper than we pay, but is your water provider offering all the usual reef contaminates such as cloride or chloramine, or do you draw from a spring or some other supply where such 'contaminates' don't exist? The latter two would make some sense to moi.
To give you some idea - we Brits (those in the know) would pay just over $37 USD for 3 standard size polyfilters and (as another example) a 25kg bucket of Reef Crystals would cost $93 USD - retail...and I'm talking smart buying.
Besides the initial cost of a triple membrane RO unit, all I now pay for are four 20" pre-filters every 6 months, and a sack of mixed bed DI resin which works out at about $125 USD a year for my 1000 gal system.
My math certainly ain't perfect, but can you see where I'm coming from? Going down your route, over here, would be very costly. If I'm missing something (other than you are where you are, and I'm where I am) purleeze tell me, cos I hate wasting good money.

 

[Mojoreef]

Robin I think we are just misunderstanding each other. I also use a ro/di unit, for my tap water. So our methods are the same in the dealing with phosphates and other things from the tap water source. With this ro/di water I make my kalk and dose about 10 gallons a day, so I dont use very much if any water directly from the ro/di unit (although it is plumbed directly to my sump).
The chemical filters are a completely different form of filtration for a completely different problem. The carbon ilter is used periodically to remove certian elements from the tank that are generated by the tank or by my input into the tank. The phosphate filter is used to remove phosphates that are also produced by the tank or by the products I input into it.
Or are we still talking about different things

Reefdude thanks for the compliments...

Hiya Jeff buddy, yep those are your mangroves, darn things are growing like crazy. Yes I did get your card, your wife is looking even more beautiful then before (if thats possible) thanks a bunch. When you coming up for a visit??????. Next project??? only God knows for sure.


take care

mike