sfsuphysics
Active member
Pop pulled his 300g (rough guess) rubbermaid he used as an outdoor pond, I decided I wanted it. Now what to do with it.
The direction I'm leaning towards is for a type of (not-quite)refugium or lagoon style semi-reef, but what I don't want is just to have a large sump. Now I plan on having this in my sun-room/greenhouse area on the back of my house where my sump for one of my tanks currently is, but basically I'd like to light it with natural sunlight.
Some ideas I had, sand bed, maybe a remote sandbed for my main tank, but I realize that it will be a helluva lot of sand.
Seagrasses & mangroves, perhaps other types of macroalgae as well.
Surge driven, since there are no bulbs to splash onto, nor any sideview to worry about bubbles, maybe use a siphon surge since it seems the easiest to tune.
And hooked to my main tank, perhaps the overflow from my sump can be what powers the surge.
However I would like some input from others who have done something similar, maybe those who have set up greenhouse coral growout tanks (I do not want to do that however
).
Temperature, both hot and cold, hot from the sun (even if it is filtered), cold from the night (sure this is San Francisco but low 40s can turn a tank into a mess.) Simply fans and more heaters? Or could I somehow insulate around the tank to keep it a bit more stable?
Light - too much? not enough? what are we looking at with sunlight?
Creatures - I'm thinking as many clean up crew critters as I can to deal with potential algae problems, maybe some herbivore fish (ones that don't eat seagrasses)
Anything else I'm potentially missing?
The direction I'm leaning towards is for a type of (not-quite)refugium or lagoon style semi-reef, but what I don't want is just to have a large sump. Now I plan on having this in my sun-room/greenhouse area on the back of my house where my sump for one of my tanks currently is, but basically I'd like to light it with natural sunlight.
Some ideas I had, sand bed, maybe a remote sandbed for my main tank, but I realize that it will be a helluva lot of sand.
Seagrasses & mangroves, perhaps other types of macroalgae as well.
Surge driven, since there are no bulbs to splash onto, nor any sideview to worry about bubbles, maybe use a siphon surge since it seems the easiest to tune.
And hooked to my main tank, perhaps the overflow from my sump can be what powers the surge.
However I would like some input from others who have done something similar, maybe those who have set up greenhouse coral growout tanks (I do not want to do that however
).Temperature, both hot and cold, hot from the sun (even if it is filtered), cold from the night (sure this is San Francisco but low 40s can turn a tank into a mess.) Simply fans and more heaters? Or could I somehow insulate around the tank to keep it a bit more stable?
Light - too much? not enough? what are we looking at with sunlight?
Creatures - I'm thinking as many clean up crew critters as I can to deal with potential algae problems, maybe some herbivore fish (ones that don't eat seagrasses
) Anything else I'm potentially missing?
