securing airlifts

[rick rottet]

1) how do you secure air lift tubes. Just bury them in the sand and drill the inlet holes above the expected level of the sand or do you have to silicone them to the bottom of the tanks? or other?

2) Are there any special considerations in placing aquarium kept corals into a greenhouse application? i.e. using shade cloths to match the lux/par levels and gradually decreasing shade. Would it be better to only use wild harvested specimens?

[Anthony Calfo]

Hard to say about the airlifts, Rick... you've given me no information on their size, composition, arrangements (clusters, single, etc). You really just need to be inventive my friend. Ist necessary if you are going to survive in keeping/running a working greenhouse.

FWIW... some folks commonly band lifts together (clusters of 3 or 4) with large plastic cable ties and them anchor them in the sand.

As to acclimating corals to GH/natural light... its no different than acclimating wild corals to artificial light or wild to GH/artificial to artifical.

Always be gentle and slow with some sort of graduated exposure (screens work great for this in my opinion)

best regards,

Anthony

[rick rottet]

Thanks as always.

The reason I wondered about securing the airlifts is that it seems to me that large and bubbling volumes of water/air rising and hitting the 90 degree elbow at the top of an airlift might cause the airlift tubes to float away regardless of size/composition/grouping, especially if each tube has a single outlet/airline (or more) running to it. I dont have any experience with them other than a few UGF in my very early freshwater days-over 30 years ago.