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#276
11/03/2003, 04:25 PM
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Starboard poly-sheets plastic building material you can buy at West Marine. www.westmarine.com
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RGibson |
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#277
11/03/2003, 04:30 PM
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Starboard poly-sheets plastic building material you can buy at West Marine. www.westmarine.com
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RGibson |
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#278
11/03/2003, 05:14 PM
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Export nutrients by all means possible. |
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#279
11/03/2003, 05:34 PM
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 Someone explained to me a long time ago (OK OK it might have been about a century  ) that - If you can't explain something in plain English -- then you don't know what you're talking about. 
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#280
11/03/2003, 05:36 PM
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#281
11/03/2003, 06:40 PM
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i'm quite the novice on reef keeping, BUT: it seems many can keep a successful reef tank with a dsb for 4 years or more...don't prematurely jump on the starboard bandwagon! no offense to you all on your starboard reefs or anything, but, there's some highly successful tanks out there with dsb's. i don't know that i'd break down a perfectly cycled tank just yet. not to mention that the starboard tank looks kinda....sterile. |
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#283
11/03/2003, 07:22 PM
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I'll post one of my first recommendations when converting and DSB to BB. I'm posting it to both thsi site and the Conversion to BB Discussions. The nore I think about, this recommendation may be even more important to BB than a DSB system.
In your case Bomber it may not be as important, but most of cannot afford or care to go through massive weekly water changes you do. With you large water changes it is not as critical because your potential nitrate unset loading is addressed with you massive frequent water changes. As I posted on another thread... My Newby stupidity Example: I think I have over loaded my system with fish. I have nearly a dozen in a 45 gallon tank. My Tang and LawnMower are pooping machines. My Jawfish are making holes in my bed. Even with this every thing was great, with good water quality and zero nitrates. My Calc was 460, Alk 11.2, pH 8.3. salinity 1.025, temp. 80F. Then, last week all hell broke loose, my tank had a algae bloom. Nitrates started climbing. I discovered the cause. In the back of my fuge a large clump of algae was growing and went sour in the center and was dumping everything back in the system. Near the top of my live rock column hair and clump fern type algae srted to grow, which I recently read is poisonous, and why the Tang wouldn't touch it. I knew the cause of the sudden algae bloom was in large part the nitrate loading from the dying algae, but I could not seem to bring the bloom under control, even with the fuge cleaned up. I started reading on this an other sites everything I could find on other's efforts and approaches to bring the hair algae under control. I read about many different experiences, and one of which was the use of Ozone injected right into the to the skimmer. A process used by many commercial aquariums. The advantage of Ozone is that it directly treats organic build up in the water by oxidizing it. Interesting read: http://www.netpets.com/fish/referenc...ook8c.html#8.5 I purchased a RedSea AquaZone 100ml/hr unit with a built in ORP meter and controller. Recommended treatment rates is about 1ml/tank gallon and reduce it from their as your ORP reading starts to get back where it should be between 320 and 400 mv. This unit does it automatically. I hooked it up. My ORP readingwas only 230mv. Poor quality water quality which you could not tell by looking at it. The dying algae was dumping alot of phos and nitrogen back into the tank. A catch 22. You try to kill off the algae and it only makes thing worse with nitrogen and phos over load as it strats to die. I cut my fish feeding in half, started feed Kalk 24/7,( along with my present CalcReactor) and added an Ozone system. Within 24 hours my ORP reading was up to 330 mv. In three days nearly all the algae has turned white. The immediate affect on the coral was amazing. All the coral virtually bloomed and expanded more than it ever had in the past. My Pagoda's became solid extended polyups. The Shooms expanded twice as large as they had ever been. The Bubble was like a helium ballon. Even my new blue tort frags now had all their polyps extended. You could almost watch them respond as the ORP strted to climb from the ozone addition.  The tank water virtually became crystal clear. The skimmer foam was white and lite. The skimmer waste looked like tea instead of tar and no longer stunk. Nitrate is back to zero where it should be and ORP is back to over 330 and climbing. The tank is recovering nicely and coral and fish never looked so good. When you go BB, the skimmer performance becomes evenmore critical. I don't beleive their is a better way to increase it's efficiency than injecting Ozone. The ORP meter and probe alone is worth the price. You can trace the water quality trend. If a fish dies our you have an algae bloom you see an immediate drop in the ORP. When I feed the fish it drops immediately. When you give it some thought, adding ozone isn't much different than a CalcReactor, Skimmer, or High Flow pumps. A high ORP reading is comparable to a high ALK reading. Both give you the buffer to absorb and stabilize changing loads. All are artifcial means of duplicating what happens in nature to improve tank water quality for corals. It gives you the capability of giving immediate response to poor water quality. Even more affectivel than water changes do. Freshly made up salt water only has an ORP reading of about 240. As you can tell...I'm sold
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#284
11/03/2003, 07:42 PM
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I'm running a 80wHO UV for some of the same reasons. UV's produce a certain amount of ozone.
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hawke, where do nitrates come from?
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#286
11/03/2003, 08:12 PM
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If you don't leave it in there to break down, you don't have high nitrates.
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#288
11/03/2003, 09:23 PM
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Not so. Ammonia/ammonium does not hang around that long and is used as food. Nitrites are easily exported as bacterial flock and detritus.
The nitrate problems are from letting waste sit there and rot. |
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#289
11/03/2003, 09:48 PM
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pulling my 4-6 " DSB out tomorrow , I am just sick and tired of trying to get rid of the hair algae growing on the rocks and the brown diatom growing all over the sandbed. I have only one frigging fish in a 65 gallon tank{one purple tang} , plus two cleaner shrimp. Then only feeding that the tank gets is a small daily addition of Seaweed Select algae on a clip , thats it. Have about 60 -70 pounds of Marshall Islands live rock that I got from Premium Aquatics . Using an Etss downdraft skimmer that works very well . Use a Spectrapure 5 stage ro/di unit for a water additions , including the evap. water with kalkwasser. Lights are Custom Sealife (4 65 watt ) almost brand new...! Have had several sucessful reef tanks in the past using a basic Berlin setup , had a few episodes with hair algae , but they didnt last very long , probably because I got behind in my husbandry....but never have I had the problems that I have experienced with this DSB . I has been over two years now and it has never been right.
I am throwing in the towel on the DSB ........! When I set up my 150 that is in progress , you can bet it wont be a DSB either. Steve |
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#291
11/03/2003, 11:27 PM
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I did forget to mention I was not thrilled about the idea of losing 1/4 of my display to sand. Seems to me that increases your biolode by having less of a natural area for your fish to roam.
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#293
11/04/2003, 02:49 AM
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nanorfj, I was meaning to ask you where you had gotten the rest of your live rock. I know you mentioned Dr. Mac and Sons for the couple of pieces on the left, but it all looks beautiful; and the pieces on the right look very similiar. Are my eyes deceiving me, or is that fairly new rock covered in pinkish/purple coralline...that's what I want! Looks beautiful up against the black cutting board..
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#296
11/04/2003, 08:19 AM
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The total concept of how to process detritus in a tank changes when you go BB. The first stage of waste processing now becomes physical and not biological treatment to collect solids. The conventional tank designs with top over flows become obsolete. It now becomes more like how I designed all my Koi systems to export large quantities of waste taht collects on the bottom of the ponds I built around my home. The idea is to not allow solid waste to remain in the tank for biological processing in the sand bed or on the live rock. Actually the concpet would benefit even a convention DSB system becasue it would reduce waste loading on the biological system. If you have a bare bottom, the waste discharge inlet needs to be on the bottom of the tank, NOT THE TOP. Most of the waste gravitates to the bottom. You want the major tank flow to be off the bottom of the tank, not an over overflow weir at the top, so the settling waste can be easily collected and exported. I have come up with a relatively easy concept fix that can be adapted to most tanks with internal overflow weir chambers. I will draw it up when I have time. Basically all you do is build and over flow inside the exisitng overflow box and take it's feed inlet off the bottom of the tank weir chamber. It simply requires cutting a 3/4" or larger hole near the bottom of the internal overflow chamber, inside the tank. Gluing in a 3/4 to 1 1/2 inch 90 degree elbow, or if you have enough room use a bulkhead fitting, inside the chamber with the elbow turned up. Cut a piece of pipe a to insert (not glue) in the elbow, so that the top of the pipe is about a 1/2" below the existing over flow and inside the overflow chamber. That way the existing over flow system remains functional and a backup, if for any reason the adapted outlet plugs. It will need a coarse screen on the inlet of the elbow so you don't easily suck up the fish. The concept can be modified and adapted for other tank configurations and overflow designs. In this manner most of the tank recirculation flow is now off of the bottom of the tank where waste collects and settles. The tank outlet flow could go to a gravity vortex separator to centrifuge out the solids collected to a reduced the water volume and concentrate the waste. From their the reduced waste volume flow can go through a bag filter or a settling chamber where it concentrates and can be removed daily. I designed a vortex chamber in my existing system return sump. It is simple and fool proof. It discharges into an attached nylon mesh collection bag. It works great. I empty a bag of solid waste from it daily. It is a simple design you can build with 4" PVC pipe and adapters from Home Depot. All it takes is a little cutting and grinding to build the inlet to cause the vortex action. COMMENTS and questions? 
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#297
11/04/2003, 09:10 AM
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Yes, how will you prevent your tank from being drained when the return pump is off? Do you drill an anti-siphon hole in the pvc near the top of the overflow chamber?
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Marc Levenson - member of DFWMAS |
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#299
11/04/2003, 09:24 AM
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That is the reason for the inserted stand pipe. With the piece of PVC pipe inserted in the turned up elbow and cut so it is just 1/2" below the existing weir height, that won't happen.
The most that can drain into the sump is the amount of water above the height of the pipe. All you are doing is bypassing the exisitng weir and taking your return flow off of the bottom of the tank. The the height of the over flow can easily be adjusted by the length of the stand pipe. You immediately make it non functional by making it higher than the exisiting weir. Or you can play with the standpipe length and adust it so it is just high enough were it can't handle all of the pump return overflow and them part of the over flow continues over the existing weir. making it so that the flow is split with part going over the top and part being taken off of the bottom. 
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