Soooo Much Confusion..... Help me with reef overhaul. I need your 2 cents.

[Lost_N_Space]

Hi All,
I need your help! In a nutshell, I lost my 3 year old reef tank last January due to a power outage while I was out of town. When I came home, everything was dead and I was SICK at the loss. Now I have the chance to do it again but I don't want to make mistakes that can be avoided. Basically I will put pictures up of my tank and describe what all I have in the tank, sump, filtration, rock, circulation, lighting, etc., and let those of you who have many more years experience than I do, advise me what needs changed and to what. I can take as many pictures as needed to accomplish this. So if there is something you want to see to better, closer, or a different angle just ask and I'll post those. I want to do this right rather than figuring out I have some major problems a year or so down the road. Thus far I’ve had no major problems with my water chemistry but I can go into that as well if need be. I’m 2 months into re-building my reef tank right now so I think now is the best time to make changes since I didn’t have the advantage of this forum and everyone’s experience 2 months ago. I’m sure this won’t be my last tank, or the biggest tank I'll ever own and the more I can learn now, the easier it will be as time goes on so let the critique begin.

My tank is a 48" Wide x 24" Tall x 18" Deep.

My lighting is 2 150 watt, 14000 K Aqualight Advanced Series HQI Metal Halide Fixtures.

The overflow is in the back Left corner which drains into my sump after filtering through two fine foam filters.



The sump (Oceanic Systems - Reef Ready) dimensions are 36" wide x 12" deep x 17" tall. I have 1 gal of bio-balls in a home made Plexiglas box and a phosguard filter where the water exits. There is another 20 ppi foam filter in my sump where the water passes from one side to the other. My return pump is outside the sump and connected via plumbing. The pump is an Ehiem Hobby Pump although I can't remember exactly which one it is and it’s out of sight.




My UV Sterilizer is a Turbo Twist x3 9w and the pump for that is a Maxi-Jet 400 (106gph).

The skimmer is a Pro Clear Aquatic Systems out of Jacksonville, Florida.

Starting from the bottom up inside the tank, the substrates are 4 bags of Aragamax Sand on the bottom and two bags of Florida Crushed Coral/Shell on top of the sand.

I have spaghetti worms living in the substrate as well as a Diamond Watchman Gobie, a Lawnmower Blenny (Salarias fasciatus), 12 Nassarius Vibex snails and 10 Scarlet Hermit Crabs which all keep my substrate aerated.

My Live Rock is mostly Fiji Premium Live Rock but some is Caribbean Live Rock. I would guess that it’s right around 100 Lbs.

I have an external box filter that is a Rena Filstar xP3. The bottom canister is the 30 ppi foam on the bottom, on top of that is 20 ppi foam. The middle Canister has Ceramic rings in the bottom half and the top is SeaGel which takes care of organics, silicates, toxic metals, acids and phosphates. I’ll include description of the flow in and out of the filter under Circulation.

I’ll leave the coral description out as you can see most of it in the pictures.

Circulation: This will be very challenging to describe but I’ll give it my best try.

My return is split into two flat directional pieces and both aimed across the top of the water giving me good surface mixture and water flowing the length of the tank from left to right.
On the right hand side of the tank on the front corner half way between the top and bottom of the tank, exactly opposite the return flow, I have a power sweep power head giving me a very good current across the front of the tank.
Additionally I have a small Mini-jet 404 that is at the top of the tank just below the water level mounted on the back glass aiming the water forward to the front glass.
My return from the Filter box is 6� below water level, aimed toward the front glass from the back glass. The water is distributed evenly out eight holes in a 1� piece of PVC. The intake to the Rena Filstar xP3 is in the right hand back corner and 5� up from the substrate.
Hmmmm…. What have I left out?

Some questions I have right off the bat are:
Should I do away with the bio-balls?
Should I get rid of the crushed coral and use only the sand?
Should I keep the ceramic rings in the external filter?
Do I have enough circulation?
Should my LR have more space between them?
What other things do you see or suspect could cause me problems in the future?

I'll post some more pictures tomorrow that are higher resolution and closer to help determine if I need to make some changes.

[pepe.king.prawn]

Looks pretty good to me! I would say it's safe to remove the bio balls. It sounds like you're aware of the reason for this, being that they are unnecessary, and use up oxygen and other nutrients in the water.

Crushed coral is fine as long as you think it looks good.

The ceramic rings in the canister probably don't do much, you can safely remove those as well, under the same theory as the bio balls.

The amount of circulation is entirely depended upon what sorts of corals you would like to keep. If you wish to delve into SPS, you would probably need more, and more random, flow and higher light, but that doesn't look to be where you're going at the moment.

Aquascaping is entirely up to your eye and what you think is aesthetically pleasing. Your tank has plenty of room to change it up. A friend of mine had the same size tank as you, and had his rock set up so that it was an island in the center, with lots of arches and open space between the rocks, but there was still room for fish to swim in front, above, behind and to the sides of it, I thought it was pretty cool! But again, this is up to your discression, no one elses.

I don't know very many people that run a UV sterilizer on a reef, as it may be unnecessary and some argue it kills pods and plankton, but if it works for you keep it.

You could always add a refugium, those are fun and cool. Moonlights are cool too. These days micron bags (filter socks) seem to be more popular for water polishing than foam filters. Not necessary, but worth a thought. Just keep in mind you have to wash micron bags frequently to keep them from building up nitrates.

Looks good! best of luck to you.

[Mishap]

Should I do away with the bio-balls?

Bio-balls in my opinion are dangerous to deal with. After a while they end up being nitrate facories. You could pull them and get some extra LR rubble to replace them.

Should I get rid of the crushed coral and use only the sand?

Crushed coral is fine to have. It's mainly whatever you like seeing as substrate. I prefer sand with some assorted shells, etc.

Should I keep the ceramic rings in the external filter?

Ceramic rings are along the same lines as the bio-balls. Replace with LR rubble

Do I have enough circulation

Circulation depends on the type of coral and fish you plan to keep.

SPS do better with higher flow, Tunzes and Seios seem to be the best route, but the maxi jet mods are much cheaper and offer great flow.

If you are planning on a softie tank, then your flow seems adequate so long as you don't have too many deadspots. For softies Zoo Med Powersweeps offer great flow and are very inexpensive. (although they do slow down alot if overgrown by algae...regular cleaning is necessary with these). Or Maxi jets strategically place would work just as well.


Should my LR have more space between them?

Aquascaping should be done to however you can arrange it so you are happy looking at it. I usually go for a cave or 2 along with alot of swimming room for fish.

What other things do you see or suspect could cause me problems in the future?

My only concern really is the UV sterilizer. They do indeed help in the killing of algae spores as well as harmful bacteria. But they are only effective against particles in the water column, not whats on your rocks/in your sand.

Along with killing the harmful bacteria, you also vaporize any beneficial bacteria that passes through it. Pods and other helpful critters are also killed if they pass through it.

In my opinion, I would prefer the UV on a QT tank rather than the display tank. I am entirely biased as I have never used UV sterilization on my home tank. But I have used it at work and we still had an ich outbreak.

You seem to be off to a great start already! Doing some research is always good.

Hope this helped a little,

Matt

[Sk8r]

Things look good. I'd take a look at that pump and try to figure out how much flow you actually have. I run a 9.5 mag in a 52 gallon bowfront corner, and that's about right. And lose the bioballs and foam filters: nitrate accumulations. Keep the cannister for emergencies like running carbon.

Here's my reasoning. Your live rock and live sand grow bacteria in response to the challenge of fish and other creatures. If let alone, the load is balanced: enough poo/food = enough bacteria grow to handle it. No spikes, no fluctuations. Which is why you add fish slowly, to let the bacteria catch up to the load.

If you have foam and bioballs, they have to be cleaned out occasionally. Now, they've been sopping up some of the food/poo that the bacteria in the tank would have taken (and used to multiply in number)---and suddenly you clean the filter, and wipe out part of your biological filtration. A whole lot of poo hits the unready rock/sand bacteria, which struggle to digest it---and there's a small ammonia/nitrate spike in consequence. Your wet dry filter finally settles into action and takes the glut of food away, just as your rock had adjusted, so now you get a small dieoff of rock bacteria, which have starved, and the tank is back to relying on your wet/.dry---until you clean it again, and the whole bounce and spike happens all over again. THe way to avoid that is to only clean one sponge or one lot of bioballs a week and leave the rest dirty or only rinsed a bit in saltwater, but that's a lot of fuss, and it's just easier to have one stable system that works smoothly. By nature of what it is, the smooth system will always be the rock and sand. Which is why you do all your treating and medicating OUTSIDE your main tank, because of the bacteria you're protecting as if it were gold.

HTH.
The lights look good, the system's beautiful. You might want to add a little more rock over time, after the system's adjusted and stable (mature systems can take a bit more alteration than new ones) just to get your corals closer to the light, if you're doing acros, but if lps, or softies, no problems in that, either. You don't mix softies with stonies, preferably: too many quarrels between the two. Your fish should be happy with the arrangement. You might take a look at eggcrating your top to prevent jumpers, which is the only scary part of what I see. Huge sump, big skimmer: you could do a refugium down there and supply enough pods for a horde of mandarins if you wanted to.

Good luck!

[Lost_N_Space]

That helps a lot. I hadn't thought about killing pods with the UV but now that you mention it, it sounds right and I'll pull the UV Sterilizer off. The reason I had put it up was I added fish to this tank and now have ich in there with my corals. I didn't have a hospital/isolation tank at the time. I've set up a 24g isolation tank now but I'm dealing with the ich which has been a pain. I never ran into this with the first set up but I'm sure that was just luck.

I'll also rid the tank of the bio balls and the ceramic rings. I had seen other posts in the last two days where simular setup's had the same thing and were running into problems so I wanted to find out now before I create a problem.

[Mishap]

Ich is a big PITA. These 2 articles by Steven Pro offer many ways of possibly controlling the ich parasite.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-08/sp/index.php

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...ture/index.php

Keep up the good work, and if you have any more questions, by all means ask them.

Matt

[MDKyleZ]

I agree with everything that all of these guys are saying, but do the research to back these ideas up before doing them. You should always understand what you are doing and why you are doing it before you do it.

Kyle

[Lost_N_Space]

Anyone have a good link to learn about refugiums? I've thought about that briefly after seeing one at the LFS but I haven't done any research on how to set it up.

That makes a lot of sence as to why to remove the bio balls and foam filters.

How fast can they be removed? I always have a 25% water change mixxed and ready should I have a spike but I'd rather avoid that if possable.

For the Ich I've been running the UV Sterilizer, trippled the dose of Vital Reef DNA, doing daily water changes, I have 3 scarlet cleaner shrimp which are doing a great job of cleaning the fish, and feeding garlic guard soaked food to the fish. I am not sure I can move all the fish to the isolation tank for treatment because it's simply not big enough to support them all. I feel rather foolish for not having a isolation tank sooner but hind sight is 20/20 so all I can do from here is continue the battle. The links you posted gave me a lot more information than I had and also showed me that I'm at least doing some things right. Thanks for posting that Matt! I've really racked my brain as to how I can treat all the fish without losin my corals.

You guys and gals rock!
Brian