The "How to go Barebottom thread."

Exactly.
You can order it cut to fit the bottom of your tank.
If there are overflows and you need to adjust it, 2 minutes with a jigsaw will tale care of that. :)
 
i recently went bb and i just went to lowes got a small sheet of plexi cut it to fit as close as i could and set it in the bottom. I didnt silicone it and havent seen any problems as of yet.
 
I like nothing on the bottom. When clean gives a mirror effect allowing me to see under rocks. Easier to clean than starboard, can scrape coraline off periodilly
 
If you have that concern you can simply get some thin plexiglass from Home Depot and cut it to fit.
 
I need some advice. I torn down my son tank last Nov 09 to do BB. After a yrs. battling algae I just gave up. Everything was doing fine under 2 month ago. The rocks beginning to have green algae film growing on it and spreading to his coral. I asked around everyone is telling me that a new tank symptom. Some said the cause is phos.and nitrate. I ended buying a denitrator and hook it up a moth ago. I'm also doing 15gal water change weekly on a 200gal tank. The rock is still green and his coral is losing color. Also have a PE issue. I change out the GFO and carbon monthly. Fish get feed once a day.
 
You may need to change your GFO every other week. Also make sure your RO/DI is in good shape. You are not exporting as much phosphates as you are importing. Are you siphoning up the detritus on a weekly basis?
 
I have a dual TDS meter on the R/O DI showing in 350 out 0. I do siphon out as much detritus as I can. BRS said I did not need to change that often. GFO is usually good for 1-3month. I don't know if a large skimmer will help or not.


RickMartin said:
You may need to change your GFO every other week. Also make sure your RO/DI is in good shape. You are not exporting as much phosphates as you are importing. Are you siphoning up the detritus on a weekly basis?
Click to expand...
 
thi7b said:
I have a dual TDS meter on the R/O DI showing in 350 out 0. I do siphon out as much detritus as I can. BRS said I did not need to change that often. GFO is usually good for 1-3month. I don't know if a large skimmer will help or not.
Click to expand...

0 TDS means nothing, hobby grade TDS meters are only good for judging when to change your membrane. I have 420 in and 0 behind my first DI and it is almost completely exhausted, so I know its letting nutrients through. This I believe is one of the biggest downfalls of people having algae problems, they think 0 TDS means its pure, when in fact their top off water is fueling their algae problem

from spectrapure faqs.. http://www.spectrapure.com/faq_p0.htm#zerotds
ZERO TDS.. IS IT REAL

I thought I would comment on the common misnomer "ZERO TDS". Persons stating ZERO TDS I assume are referring to Zero Indicated TDS. What's the difference you ask? Well, quite a bit when you are really talking about ultra pure water. Ultra pure water is about 18.2 mohms or about 0.05 micro-siemens. Most Reefers are after such ultra pure water in our experience. Thus, if there were such a thing as "ZERO TDS", it might be more appropriately measured around 0.05 micro siemens. Unfortunately, most (not all) inexpensive TDS meters can resolve at best about 5 micro seimens. That is several decades less sensitivity than required to be stating so called "ZERO TDS".

While 5 micro siemens conductivity (at an affordable price and rugged instrument easily operated and maintained) is very reasonable for for break-through detection to signal cartridge replacement required, it is clearly not sufficient to measure or crow about having "ZERO TDS" . Thus, postings where one has "measured" a system or component performance and state they have "ZERO TDS" should be careful to quantify the accuracy of the instrument they are using to make such a claim. Hopefully this will shed some light on... zero is not always zero.
Click to expand...

As far as GFO, the length of time it will last depends on the amount of phosphates in your tank, and how fast the pores will be coated with calcium carbonate. X amount of GFO can only absorb Y amount of phosphates, its possible it could be saturated in a very few days. Calcium carb and probably organics will eventually coat the pores blocking access for phosphate absorption (adsorption), this length of time varies depending on many factors.

IMHO if you are having algae problem it should be changed at least every other week and maybe even weekly. With a method available to recharge GFO this shouldn't even be an issue.
 
thi7b you can never go wrong with a bigger skimmer, I agree with them on changing the carbon and GFO, It can exhausted fast if you have high nutrients. Get a good cleanup crew to eat algae.
Do you run a filter sock? That might help you tank in the long run...
 
I don't know if someone answered this somewhere else in this, but can you just cook the rocks in the new tank? I have a lot of LR in another bigger dsb tank and am going to set up a smaller BB tank. Would it be easier to cook some of the rock from my bigger tank in the new smaller one, or to start off fresh with uncured rock? (again in the smaller one)

Then, while the rock is cooking, should I skim it in the new tank while thats going on? You're only removing waste with the water changes in the cooking process, so skimming should help accomplish that if I have enough flow to get the detritus in the water column...... correct?
 
Nerd1717 said:
I don't know if someone answered this somewhere else in this, but can you just cook the rocks in the new tank? I have a lot of LR in another bigger dsb tank and am going to set up a smaller BB tank. Would it be easier to cook some of the rock from my bigger tank in the new smaller one, or to start off fresh with uncured rock? (again in the smaller one)

Then, while the rock is cooking, should I skim it in the new tank while thats going on? You're only removing waste with the water changes in the cooking process, so skimming should help accomplish that if I have enough flow to get the detritus in the water column...... correct?
Click to expand...

There's a "how to cook rock" thread somewhere which is well worth reading.

Generally, the "cooking" process involves taking the rock out and vigourously plunging ans swashing the rock in sucessive buckets in order to get all the dead and rotten gunk out of it. At first, this needs to be done daily..... then gradually there is nothing left to "wash" out of it. When I first read about doing this, I thought "what a load of nonesense" ..... but I was driving to doing it as a last resort after many problems with my system....... I could not believe the shere volume of silt and gunk and crap that came out of the rock.

To that end, truly the best way of "cooking" rock, in my opinion, is in barrels / big tubs / buckets...... that can easily be emptied and moved around and washed out.

If you just let it sit in your tank, in darkness, you are only half cooking it, in my opinion..... which is little more than "curing" it..... again, in my opinion.

Finally, in my opinion, the whole "cooking" thing is really worth while...... it is a right pain in the butt, but the rewards are worth the toil.
 
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