Tank of the Month - June 2003

Hey Everybody

Many thanks to each of you for the comments. :)
I try to answer all your questions as soon as I can.

Aged Salt:

Media in my calcium reaktor is a mixture of Aqua Medic Hydrocarbonat and GroTech Magnesium pro (about 10 % of the media, mainly magnesiumcarbonat). The second chamber of the reaktor is filled with crushed corall, but the dissolution of the media in the second chamber is very minimal.

percula99:

diy float switch is very simple in design. When the water level rises in the sump, the arm with styro foam rises and the short thin arm in the other side of shaft presses and shuts the thin silicon tube. Top-off water comes from container which is under pressure ( or you can use gravity fed system) through that thin silicon tube to the kalkwasser reactor and from there to the sump.
The flow of kalkwasser to the sump is very slow, drop by drop. The switch is very reliable, never has failed and keeps the water level in the sump very steady. I think its much reliable and better than those electrical and some machanical systems.

I will answer other questions a bit leter when i get rid of my quests. ;)
 
Wow - so many cool ideas. I hadn't heard about the suspending corals idea. I've been interested in doing more aquaculturing, so this is a fascinating idea to me.

I really dig the fungia on the bottom. What an unusual and beautiful coral. The tank would be spectacular without it, but it definitely makes the tank "different" from the standard fare.

Anyone have a link to a DIY calcium reactor? I need to get started. :D
 
Marko what do you have in that small clam feeding/holding tank pictured on your site? Yeast?
 
The Zinn Plankton Reactor in an excellent product to grown zoo- and phytoplankton at the same time with minimal amount of work. Phyto- and zooplankton compartments are seperated with a wall in which there is four dense circular nets. The hole size in the net is maybe 60 mikron, I first thought it was a 100 micron net, but the holes may be smaller. The net lets the phytoplankton to go through, but Brachionus plicatilis does not pass it.

Two times a day one airpump pumps 15 min and lifts small amount of phyto water to the zoo compartment to feed the rotifers. Same amount of water returns to phytocompartment through the net with nutritients produced by rotifers. The phytoplankon uses those nutritients to grow.

In the phyto compartment another airpump pumps continously and lifts phyto water to filter box in which there is a net of same quality in the bottom of the box. The filter box filters out in ex. any unwanted rotifers that might have got to the phyto compartment. This prevents the unwanted crash of the system.

I harvest rotifers 1-3 times in a week with a little net from the reactor. I then feed them with phytowater about half an hour and then pour them to my tank. Daily I just take a cup of (2 dl) phytowater and add it to my tank. I then add some half strength saltwater to reactor to keep the volume of the reactor the same.

Once a month I take new starters from zoo- and phytoplankton, clean the reactor and start over again. Then I add some phyto fertilizer in the reactor, but not after that anymore. In about 4-6 days you can start harvesting again. In my hands if I let the reactor run much longer than a month the risk of crash of the system rises. If I see that the reactor starts to crash I just quickly take starters from phyto and zoo and then filter the phytowater with filterbox, clean the reactor and start over again.

As I said in the article I am so happy with the reactor that I will never go back to the bottle mess again. :cool:
 
tank of the month

tank of the month

I WANT TO KNOW HOW MANY TIME OF LIGHT NEEDS THE REFUGIUM AND WHICH TYPE IN MARKO'S TANK?
 
Rock Anemone:

Yes, the stuff in the refugium is mainly capnella, the caulerpa was thinned out heavily before the photo was taken.

Frisco:

The photos in my web site are really clams in the doximycin (antibiotic) treatment bath. About three months ago I noticed a disease which was slowly progressing in my clams. It began in crocea which was bought some time before I noticed the disease. Edges of the mantle became to wrinkle more and more and some slime was prodused from the wrinkles. The disease progressed slowly over weeks and it spreaded to first squamosa which was next to it. Then it spread to derasa which was in a short distanse. Squamosa was in a quite bad condition when I decided to do something. I had readed from Reef Central forums of the same kind of disease and that you can treat it with freshwater dip, but I decided to try doximycin (100 mg/20l every day, 50% water change every day, 7 days) treatment. In two days the squamosa was much better, and in 5 days no signs of illness any more. After that I tried freshwater dip in derasa and crocea, but it did not help them. Then I treated them also with doximycin, and they were cured. But in a month the disease renewed. I should have treated them at the same time, but I did not. This time I did that with doximycin and after that no signs of illness any more.

The photos in my web site are from maybe day 6 of the treatment. You can see the water is very red from the breakdown products of doximycin. The clams looked like very odd in that red water, did not seem to harm them any way, fully open and good looking. I was very happy I had managed to cure them. :)
 
Haaga,

Thanks for the explanation of the phyto-reactor! Very interesting and a good concept. Do you know if they have a US supplier?

Once again, contragulations on being TOTM. :D

Jim
 
By my waiting a couple of days, it looks like almost every question I had in mind was answered by Haaga or others. :D

I'd never seen the SPS-on-a-string method, but I sure like it!

Back to the Pepsi talk (Sorry Skipper, I know you're off duty and thinking Reef-Talk now....), how did you hook up your Kalk reactor to the Pepsi bottle? Is there a connection near the base, so the kalk goes through the CC and ejects from the tubing at the top?

Your corals are absolutely stunning, and there were several shots I really liked. Great photography skills as well, Marco.

I knew that Phyto tank would get a zillion questions, as I read your description of your set up. You've explained it very well, but what do you do while your cultures restart from scratch for those 6 days? Do you save some before you tear it down? What are those chips at the base of the clear section of the phtyo-station? Your culture restarts very quickly, compared to what I've come to know here. When we start it up (in those dreaded bottles :lol: ), we have to wait 14 days before we can split and harvest.
 
SteveMH, if you really wont to buy plancton reactor here is the link to german online shop who sell internationaly,price is about 80 $http://www.aquapro2000.de/Indexm.htm ,go to on line shop then to -neuheiten-and scrool down to the midlle of page(direct link dont work)
Beautifull reef aquarium Marko:)
 
melev:

Yes, there is only a thin hose connected to the Pepsi bottle near base, and the water goes out of the bottle from a connection in the top.
When I restart the plankton reactor I can take nearly 10 liters of phytowater and put it in the frigde and put to tank as needed. I the reactor crashes then I have nearly 10 liters of water full of rotifers :D
Chips in the base of the zoo chamber are sintered glass biological filtersubstrat. I noticed that they significantly stabilized the system. Rotifers swim and eat more and multiply more quickle. Maybe the produced ammonium is converted to nitrite which disturp less rotifers, I think.


As bluereefs wrote AquoPro2000 is an excellent source to get your reactor. It is also sold in many German aquarium netshops which deliver goods internationaly, I have not heard if anyone is importing it to USA.
 
reactor

reactor

Thanks bluereefs. I really want to buy this reactor. I tried the bottles but they are very inconvenient. My rotifers died after a week because I could not feed them on daily basis.

Anyway, I wrote AquaPro2000 to see if they will ship to US. Anyone else who can read German to help us to a group purchase? Thanks,

Peter
 
Peter, I sent them an email, and hopefully we can figure out if it is worth it.

Group buy??!! What did this TOTM start? ;)
 
Shoot me a PM if you guys get a group buy together or find anything out.

I've never heard of sintered glass biological filter substrate. What is it? This TOTM is showing me so many new things, it's great that we get an european TOTM to see what is going on the other side of the pond. We should look for a japanese TOTM in the future to see what crazy systems they are running.

:D

Jim
 
I definitely want one of those plankton reactors. Count me in for sure, and feel free to contact me if I can help out in anyway to get some shipped over. I have no idea what I'm reading on that web site, who knows what will show up at my door if I was to place an order on my own. :lol:

Once again, beautiful TOTM, and thanks for the info!
 
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