the 1700g stingray reef

[Kent E]

Sea hare! My sister had a hair algae tank, thats was the inhabitant because it took over so much and choked everything out. This ugly creature ate it ALL! You could support a few in that sized tank, they are ugly but so much so that they are actually cute and a wonderful addition to the tank at that.

 

[Travis]

I know Energy had a few sea hares in the tank already when I was up there this past fall.

Energy, it sounds like you are getting some good suggestions. IME, I have found that snails don't really do much damage to hair algae. I remember reading that once the hair algae gets longer than 1/8" or 1/4" (can't remember which one for sure), snails can no longer (or it becomes very difficult for them) eat it. I don't particularly care for emeralds becuase I've had experiences with them eating my sps polyps. I've also found that they are very difficult to remove from an established tank. I too am wary about the urchins but it sounds like others have had great experiences with them. Maybe it would be worth a try to get just a couple to start with and see if they go onto the acrylic. It would probably help to make sure you keep the acrylic nice and clean so there is no reason for them to go on it.

The best combater of hair algae that I've had is a yellow tang. I've kept many different tangs and this is the only one I've ever had that ate hair algae. Unfortunately, it only ate it for the first couple weeks before it learned that nori and frozen food was going to be provided on the daily menu. Now it won't touch it. I also don't like the idea of feeding less to the tank to try to encourage the herbivorous fish to eat the algae. I've experimented with this in the past and it did help but I also ended up with tangs that had to be removed from the tank because they ended up aquiring a taste for sps polyps. This included a sailfin tang, powder blue tang, and a foxface rabbitfish.

I like the philosophy of treating the symptom rather than applying a band-aid. But I have found that sometimes no matter what you do, you will still have some nuisance algae. But it should definitely be confined to small areas and controllable if all possible nutrient sinks have been addressed. I remember when I saw your tank that I noticed a lot of detritus accumulation back behind your rocks. I wonder if this could possibly be causing a pool of nutrients that are feeding the algae. Maybe sticking a stream or 2 back behind those rocks would help keep the detritus from settling back there. But I also remember that you were wanting to get some good cryptic sponge growth back there and didn't want too much flow.

One thing about hair algae is that it traps detritus from the water and then that detritus breaks down inside the algae strands and becomes a food source where the algae can immediatley absorb the nutrients. One of the best things that can be done is manual removal and daily blasting of the algae to blow out the detritus. But that is easy for me to say because I don't have a 1700 gallon system to work with.

I'm sure you will figure something out. I agree with what others are saying about the skimmer. It should slowly catch up with your nutrient load and will at least keep the algae in check rather than letting it take off.

 

[asnatlas]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6839116#post6839116 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Travis
I like the philosophy of treating the symptom rather than applying a band-aid. But I have found that sometimes no matter what you do, you will still have some nuisance algae. But it should definitely be confined to small areas and controllable if all possible nutrient sinks have been addressed.

He could always try cooking all of his LR LOL, sorry I had to say it...

 

[spazz]

well in my opinion the skimmer is still the problem. big ugly is doing a good job but not good enough yet. the effecinety of the skimmer is not high enough to do a proper job on a system that size. once we can get the skimmer performing right and get a direct feed line off the tank to the skimmer i think the performance will increase enough to lower the nutrient load down. we are feeding big ugly with a feed pump from the sump. that water is mixing with the clean water that is already in the sump. we need a supply of water that is not mixing with the clean water. in talking with energy he has commented in the past about making changes to the overflows. i have thought this over for a while now. i think a couple of channel overflows should be added between the 4 overflows. that would increase surface skimming and give more flow to the boxes. the big problem there is cleaning the teeth on them. the design of the tank wouldnt allow him to have axcess to the channles for cleaning. im not sure how else he could get better surface skimming from the tank.
one thing i also noticed was a low nitrate level in the tank. we tested it before we hooked up big ugly. it was suprisingly almost zero. so that makes me wonder if there is a p04 problem some how. i agree that you cant cure the problem if you dont cure the source to the problem. but that is complicated also. we are not sure what the ture source of the problem is. right now its a gussing game in a sence.
the new skimmer we are going to build for the tank is still a little ways off but the snales and emeralds my help to control the problem until we can get the new skimmer built and running on the system.

i know alot of you might not agree with energy putting emerald crabs in the tank. they can pick at corals. but you have to consider a couple of things here. 1. the size of the system. and 2. i think he is more into the fish than the corals. he has the most awesome variety of fish you could ever find in a reef tank. but to make the fish feel at home they need a reef setting. if you consider the orange spotted file fish he has in the tank. most guys like me that are sps freaks wouldnt even consider a fish like that. but he has one. and its fat as a cow eating sps pylops. but the corals dont seem affected by him what so ever. its the same with the emeralds. they may pick here and there but the system is so massive that they can support them with out any major dammage to the corals. he trully owns a piece of the ocean. we have reef tanks, he has an intire reef ecosystem. so our thoughts dont always agree with what he is doing but you have to think out of the tank and into the ecosystem. :lol:

 

[gooch]

Didn't he use a fiberglass resin/paint to hide the tubing?

If I recall a buddy of mine once used a fiberglass epoxy to coat his plywood sump and he ended up with all kinds of problems. When he went to a stock tank the problems disappeared. Unfortunately he is no longer in the hobby and I have lost comunication with him.

When I had read that he started having hair issues my first thought was of my buddies system. I hope that is not the problem. But at this point it might be something to think about.

I also agree that if detritus is accumulating under the rocks some flow may need to be added to the system.

 

[smoney]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6837366#post6837366 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dgasmd
Dude, I am telling you. I hate to be the voice of disagreement here, but trust me on this one when I say URCHINS!.....

I am just saying that they are bulldozer, I think they would be affective, but not worth it at this point. He added a huge cleaner crew and the emeralds especially will take care of the hair algae. Im not sure, but I think they would scratch the glass with their beak like teeth.


It would be better to invest in like 5-10 sea hares, that would be the best thing to do.

 

[Travis]

Is the previous skimmer still running on the tank along with the Big Ugly? If so, I think I remember reading that you guys turned the 03 off to that skimmer to get an accurate comparison of how each skimmer was performing. Might want to turn the 03 back on. I'm sure this has already been covered but I just wanted to throw it out there cuz sometimes its the little things that get overlooked.

 

[Energy]

I believe the source of the hair algae is excess detritus accumulation. As I placed the rock work I had an "open" theme in mind. As the corals grew I addded more rock and eventually closed down the open areas. I'm going through the rock and once again opening it up. I am also doing more storms to keep the dead areas in suspension and I have aimed a tunze directly behind the rocks. I have also scrubbed some rocks to help jump start the cleaning process. I know the skimmer is making a major impact since my glass cleaning is down to once a week or so. I was cleaning the glass every two to three days so I know the nutrients are being used up. I also changed my crytpic sponge refugium in a spaghetti algae refugium. I think the chaeto sucks up a lot more nutrients than the sponges. I will probably add some mexican turbos to really keep the rocks clean and probably a dozen or so bristle stars to keep things stirred up in back. I'll also look into those urchins. Those are the short spined variety? I have used the sea hares in the past but I don't like the toxins they release when they die. Thanks for the suggetsions everyone.

 

[spazz]

travis. i think the ozone is still running on the smaller skimmer. i didnt want him to shut that off because it might be pulling stuff out of the water that cant be skimmed off by big ugly. the next skimmer will have a dedicated ozone port for direct injection into the main pump. i have to check on seals for it though i think the dart pumps use buna orings. and they dont fair so well with ozone.

 

[jnarowe]

There is an article about modifying a sprinkler head to deal with detritus behind the rock and it may be something you would like. I haven't done it just because of the fear-factor of having a mechanism so deep in the tank, but it does look fairly simple to execute.

 

[melev]

Energy, I have had a large Diadema urchin that I recently had to pull out of my system because it is now causing too much destruction to SPS pieces. However, it will eat GHA and bryopsis, and because of the way it hovers and lowers down to feed, it rarely knocked over anything in the tank. Only the stuff that was balanced precariously ended up falling over.

As it travelled the sand, it walks on its spines like little stilts, and would pick up this and that gently, pick it clean and lower it back down. It would travel over a patch of zoos and those didn't even bother closing up. It grew from a tiny little guy to a semi-decent monster.

When I got it (note the aiptasia to the right for a size comparison):

and now, surprisingly posing in front of the same zoos:

The shorter spined urchins are true bulldozers knocking over anything in their path, and the one I had loved coralline (the diadema does as well) and would chew a star pattern into the acrylic overflow. It was banished into my son's 29g and does no harm but that tank is LR, clownfish, and LTA and an eel.

Here it is:

I think you've gotten pretty good advice so far. If you have quite a bit of GHA now, it could be binding up the nitrate and phosphate giving you low readings, but manually picking it off (rinsing your hand each time to avoid releasing any into the system to land elsewhere is ideal) in a typical tank. In your tank, you need a fish or several fishes that eat it. Tangs and foxface are known to eat it.

Hope you can get it under control before it starts strangling some of your beautiful SPS pieces.

 

[Energy]

It's more or less under control but it's still present in large quantites. With the massive clean-up crew I don't think it will spread much. Some of the rocks I can't really remove so I'm hoping they will attack those and eliminate the stuff. Big ugly is helping keep it under control and once the new skimmer is done I'm sure that will make a world of difference. I am also figuring out easy ways to get more flow behind the rock work. That article on the sprinkler head is pretty cool. Iv'e noticed that it doesn't come back onto the rocks once they are scrubbed cleaned. The problem is the rest of the rocks can't really be removed to easily.

 

[dgasmd]

Both of the urchins I see in the picture melev posted are not the ones I am suggesting. As a matter of fact, I would not recommend those to anyone with an acrylic tank for the same reasons touched on before. These are the oens I was refering to.

Pincushion Urchin, Blue Tuxedo (Mespilia globulus)

Pincushion Urchin, Hairy Colored (Tripneustes gratilla)

 

[jnarowe]

Yeah the Blue Tux is great but it is my understanding that they don't live long. Any comment on that?

 

[dgasmd]

I've had my original one for about 9 months now. Can't tell you past that.

 

[Energy]

Last night two of the writers for The Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine stopped by. James Fatherree "The Reefer" columnist was in town to do some lectures and he stopped by with Randy Carey who writes special features for the magazine. I thought they might take a few pictures and check out the tank for a little while to kill some time. I guess they ended up taking about 200-300 pictures between them. They hung out for about three hours before they had to go to do another presentation. James mentioned he might talk to the magazine about writing an article on the tank. I think that would be an awesome way to get more info out to the general public on large reef aquariums and mini ecosystems. I don't know if it will actually happen or not but we'll see. All in all it was pretty fun having those guys stop by.

 

[NexDog]

Well, I hope they do publish something as it's definitely well deserved.

 

[jnarowe]

Tank celebrity...

 

[melev]

How could they not write about it?! Youv'e got an amazing setup with a lot of attention to detail - especially in your desire to care for a stingray, something most don't give a lot of thought to. Congrats in advance!

 

[Travis]

Congrats Energy. Your tank is awesome enough that it should have its own magazine with monthly updates in each issue.