Reef-Farm operations

[mr.wilson]

Originally posted by redox
well said ,i see your point of view. When i drew air from inside the gh I had a constant ph problem. I also draw my skimmer air from outside(carbon block filter for any unwanted contaminants). I did infact stop the use of the blower due to several reasons. I did continue the use of the blower on the soft vat and witnessed profound results. Well the caulerpa died off and some other algae took over, only in the regen blower vat. And this is connected to my sps vat and 220gal sump and anenome vat. I use calcium reactors and that might be why I have high co2 levels inside exspecialy when its cold outside and the fans dont need to run the air gets stail. I do know that my problems were solved when i started to pull outside air in,but its hell on a regen blower due the influx of cold air on the warm parts of a blower. Air lifts work but I didnt figure them out and moved on to something else. The system is still implace but not inuse. I did although figure out the most efficient blower system should have a closed loop.A continuous piping system that returns to itself causeing a sort of venturi effect on itself. And Brian Im not trying to hijack your thread just ......getting invloved

I'm sure Brian enjoys hearing about your experiences, good and bad (the bad are particularly educational).

You've got a point about PH drops. It's something that Raaden will have to monitor. His system may be unique from yours, as he won't have the Co2 tanks going. The air intake will address ambient Co2 levels during summer months, but as you mentioned, the winter may pose some challenges. The furnace air exchanger (and or HRV) should eliminate the accumulation of Co2, but it's something that will have to be looked at closely.

I never thought of it before, but it's a reason why you don't want the surface of your water close to the floor, as Co2 gas is heavy and collects on the ground. It's also an argument for adding some terrestrial plants (during the day) to convert Co2 into o2. It will also give you someone to talk to while you work. You can even take them home with you at night to make sure they don't contribute to the production of Co2. After your wife stops talking to you for starting this whole thing, it may be your only friend.

Hey, that's a great excuse to get out of working too much in the GH..."I don't want to drop the PH with my breathing"

I've enjoy learning from your R&D work Redox. keep the info coming.

[Nowell York]

The vats really concern me. I just can't imagine that painted wood is a good long term solution in that high humidity environment. They are timebombs, frankly. I've got one word for you--plastics.

The difficulty in form factor with the cylindrical agricultural tanks could be overcome with "floating" frag trays, similar to what is used in large scale hydroponics operations. You don't need arm length access to all the frags daily.

The lack of a robust, efficient temperature regulation system in this business is really concerning--expecially when the inventory is built up.

Best of luck.

[raaden]

Well it seems that the storm that got redox also hit me as well. I have been offline for over a week and have just now gotten back online. Whats worse than that is that I was just about to move the websites in house so that I can start on some projects, and now I am a bit leary of doing so. I lost about 3-4 weeks of development when the @#$%^$ modem fried itself taking out about 1/2 of my computer with it.

There was lots going on and I have another few posts to put up, as well as two new threads (observations, and projects) that I want to start but I am not sure how soon I will get to them.

Real quickly it has been almost a solid month of record heat here, including an all time high recorded at the airport of 105. The good news is that everything seems to have done pretty well. I am currently fighting off the green hair algae plague that seems to want to take over the epoxy tank, and the poly tank is still doing very well (too bad the surface is not durable as this vat has been great). I have added some snails and tangs to it to see if they damage the liner, I am not sure what to expect from it, but will be watching closely.

More to come once I catch up

[mr.wilson]

The elevated magnesium level (1600 mg/l) method is a miracle cure for hair algae. Kent Tech M seems to be the best product for achieving this. Then you can move on to the other 2,000 problems.

I was thinking about the Co2 PH drop issue that Redox mentioned. You can buy mangrove pods cheap from Hawaii and grow them out to 6" pot size in your extra space. They grow much faster in soil, than in water. Water them with freshwater with some magnesium.

Any luck finding a substrate yet? Did you ever get a bulk price from Caribbsea?

Did you try natures Ocean? http://www.naturesocean.com/marine_substrates.htm

Estes carries calcium carbonate in generic bulk bags. http://www.estesco.com/index.html

Aqua-Medic also carries a coarse calcium carbonate gravel. It's cheap if you get the giant bag at the distributor price. http://www.aqua-medic.com/hydrocarbonate.shtml

I don't have their contact info, but Tideline is another supplier of sand, shells and dead coral. You can find their ads in older fish magazines.

"The Shell Man" has been around since the seventies, and may offer a bulk deal on tiny shells from Florida or The Philippines. http://www.theshellman.com/

[Nowell York]

Is making your own salt cost effective?

[mr.wilson]

Raaden may be more industrious than me, and be able to pull it off. I tried it back when I had a wholesale warehouse. It was cheaper at the time, but time consuming. Salt prices are so low now, I doubt it would be worth it. Instant Ocean mixes and packages most of the brands on the market.

I had to buy large quantities of chemicals to get a good price, so I ended up with $1,000.00 worth of chemicals per order that were easily contaminated in a humid warehouse. It's also hard to find salts that are in suitable flake size. Some of the components I used were large crystals that took a long time to dissolve. The major salts were easy to measure accurately, but the minor salts were a little difficult. I used pre-mixed trace elements to save time and to limit my chemical inventory.

It's hard to order the right amount as they come in 40 pound bags and you use varying amounts of each. You may need two bags of calcium chloride for every bag of magnesium chloride/sulphate. Obviously, sodium chloride is the cheapest of the chemicals and makes up 75% of the mix.

Many of the salts are desiccants so they absorb moisture from the air and go hard in the bag. I also had mice pooping in the bags and occasional spills of caustics (wear gloves and eye protection. You need a good scale to weigh the ingredients, so there's more money (get a triple beam if you go that route, the digital ones are over-rated).

I mixed mine in a 750 gallon container of water, so it was easy to get a homogeneous mixture. I didn't look forward to the days when it ran out and I had to climb up a 12' ladder to dump new stuff in.

I like using Instant Ocean in the 200 gallon commercial mix. It comes in 50 gallon mix bags, so it's easy to handle and measure. Making your own supplemnets on the other hand is well worth the effort. You can fine tune the dosing to push a little harder in a coral farm. More light means more supplements (calcium, magnesium, carbonates, bicarbonates).

[raaden]

I'm not even going to attempt to make my own salt. I am sure it is possible, and in some case may even be cost effective but with everything else that requires so much attention it just wouldn't be worth it for me.

I am even starting to think twice about making my own phyto, rotis and copepods. Atleast to start off it is just too much time and too much to keep an eye on, once this becomes full time I will rething it though

[raaden]

Well it has been quite a while for any updates, there are a few reasons for this, but mostly it has been a ridiculously busy time for me. I put alot of my day job on hold while I got the greenhouse established and it has come back to bite me lately.

Just because there haven't been any updates doesn't mean there wasn't anything going, in fact there has been quite a bit.

I have been working on bringing another vat online and trying to come up with some ideas on how to make things better. I am going to go the epoxy route but this time I am going to do a wash coat, and use selvaged fiberglass tape. I am also going to use a blue epoxy and see how that affects the overall lighting in the vat.

The biggest issue so far has been with the constant green wave that has been coming and going. Ever since the bad shipment and resulting die off the epoxy vat has been going through a constant wave of phyto explosion followed by crystal clear water and then it restarts. It ramps up for about 2-3 days then there is a greenout for a day then it clears up for about 2 days before the water is clear as can be for 4-5 days then repeat. It doesn't seem to have a bad affect on chemistry as things are within what I would consider to be acceptable. I have seen cycling before but nothing to this extent. The good part of it is that I have critters like nobody's business, some I have not see before.

I also have the heater up and ready, but have not been using it yet. I am trying to see what sort of temperatures can be handled without it. As of now things are still good with daytime temps reaching 80 and nights falling into the high 50's and low 60's. The tank temps are ranging 72-77.

On the stocking front I haven't gotten any new stock since I haven't had the time to devote to it, and didn't want to get a bunch of new stuff in and be gone for MACNA. I have fragged a few things though with pretty good success. I fragged the finger leather which has been doing great. I also fragged some of the zo's and paly's, and they are doing pretty well, but it is hard to tell if they are spreading out or not.

Some of the tangs have started showing up. I added a bunch of different tangs to the inservice vats and for the longest time I only ever saw two of them. It was a little worrisome, but there was so much algea growth that I figured they just weren't coming out because the food supply didn't require it. Thankfully I was right and as they mow down the hair algea they are moving around the tank now and so far I have seen all but one.

I have also been working on some software stuff quite a bit. I am going to be cataloging all of the processes in use with the results as well as the geneology of the stock in the systems so that I can see which are doing best and relay that information to you all.

Things coming up: Getting the next tank online and started cycling, moving the reef-farm.net site somewhere that I can start to put the processes and genology online, trying more species to see which ones work out best.

[raaden]

A few things that I have been looking into.

I had visions of using a clam bed with feather dusters to handle alot of the bioload... I am not sure this is going to work. I spoke with James Fatheree at MACNA and he is doing some research into exactly this and doesn't think it is viable. From what he is seeing there is not alot of cycling of the products that clams use. He thinks that the waste from the clam goes to feed the zoox and vice versa so they don't uptake much at all. This brought up the ideas of corellations to corals, and how they might relate.

I am also quite happy that the polymer tank is holding up so well. There is a Tomini, Sailfin, and Scopas in that tank and they constantly rasp the walls of the tank with no negative effects. I have been especially watching one section of the tank where the Tomini (a bristletooth tang) is feeding and he doesn't seem to be affecting the coating on the tank at all, which surprises me quite a bit.

I also spoke at length with Daniel Knopf about fishless/filterless systems and he seemed to think what I was trying to accomplish was well within the realm of possibilities, but that I needed to be very diligent in my stocking choices. I was aware from the start that the selection of stock would have a large affect on whether it would work, but had not considered alot of things that he felt would really help. The basic ideas is that you need to lock up as much "energy" inside the bio processes in the vats as possible. What is meant by this is that you need to put the same physical mass through as many processes as possible to ensure that it is used up so that it doesn't decay. In its most basic sense this means that you start with the natural products, in my case plant matter, and make sure that there is enough herbivores in the system to ensure that it is kept in check. then you have to make sure that there are enough detritivores to handle the waste from the herbivores. There are many more steps involved but you get the point. The surprising part was that there are many thing that will work well given their ability to thrive and not undergo overpredation. This is where the selection becomes very important, it is also where the fun begins. There are so many combinations available that I may try different combinations in different systems and see which ones excel.

[raaden]

I also had a strange idea for trying to increase the efficiency/effective depth of the sand bed. I wonder if creating a water maze throughout the sand bed would increase the effective depth of the bed as it relates to lowering PH and increasing anaerobic zones. The idea is that the depth consideration talked about when referring to sand beds is from the surface to the measured point. It would seem that the benefits come from the waters inability to travel through the sand to get to that depth, and the stillness of the water motion through the sand. If that is the case the term depth is not what it seems. This could be done just as effectively in shallower depths if the water still had the same distance to travel through the sand bed.

This leads me to believe that placing membranes in strategic places in the sand bed would increase the effective depth such that I could get depths much greater than I otherwise could. This would help quite a bit as it would help with offsetting the use of calcite instead of aragonite, as well as some of the other extra deep processes that go on with really really deep sand beds.

The only downside that I can come up with is that it would reduce the effective area of the sandbed since large portions of the subsurface sand will be used to simulate deeper conditions.

It is just an idea and if anyone has input on this I would love to hear it.

[mr.wilson]

It sounds like things are coming along. Good to see you haven't lost your enthusiasm.

One benefit you have in the south, is the winter days aren't quite as short as ours in the north, so you can get more done (or you have to work longer, depending on how you look at it).

Any new ideas are worth looking into, especially with respect to nitrate reduction. High nitrate in a reef aquarium may cause more algae to grow and retard the growth of corals, but it's not the end of the world. A commercial grower on the other hand, has a two-fold problem. First of all, you have a much higher bioload due to over-crowing, and the constant flux of taking cuttings, and adding new mother colonies or crops of babies; secondly, you need to have optimum growing conditions with no limiting factors such as nitrate, as this is your livelihood.

I'm beginning to think that a passive DSB may not be enough for a commercial system. They're hit and miss at best with static hobby reefs as it is. Commercial growing systems cannot offer the same stability of a, well manicured, home aquarium where little changes.

The tragic flaw with running water through sand, is it becomes a mechanical filter. Rapid sand filters (like the ones you use on pools) have the benefit of back-washing to remove detritus. This feature is lost in marine applications, as the cost of replacing the backwash water is prohibitive.

You might be able to design a system whereby, the water flows one direction through the "maze" for a few minutes, then changes direction and flows the opposite direction for a few minutes. This wouldn't help you remove detritus, but it would prevent it from fouling your sand bed. Oceans Motions has some wave generators that would do the job nicely. The "Super Squirt" is more cost effective for your application and it can be configured to work as a two-way rotating ball valve. A pre-filter of some sort would also reduce clogging of the sand bed, but it would negate your natural ecosystem approach.

The key is to create passive flow. Direct flow will be too aerobic. There is no shortage of aerobic surface area in a coral vat, so any additional sites are redundant. You are correct in your thinking that only the first few feet will be aerobic. If the flow is slow, and the water passes through a broad area of sand, the flow will not be concentrated, and you will get the anaerobic, deep bed equivalent you desire.

There is (according to Dr. Ron Shimek) such thing as too deep of a sand bed. Apparently, anything over 22" has diminished returns, but this isn't gospel by any means. Studies of sand beds in nature have found significant colonies of bacteria at much greater depths. The limitations of a really deep sand bed may lie in the exclusion of many detrivorous, sand-sifting invertebrates and fish. While many inverts can navigate through to the depths, bristle worms and snails seem to be concentrated within the first 12". Perhaps they choose to stay at these depths to make their journey to the surface shorter. Hydrostatic pressure has nothing to do with it, as our tank/vat depth is nowhere near that of natural reefs.

Have you looked into sulfur denitrators? You can buy sulfur beads from agricultural sources at a very reasonable price. You could make some passive sulfur reactors with a length of perforated PVC pipe and some end caps. You would bury the sulfur reactors deep in the sand so they can be populated with anaerobic pseudomonas. The positive side effect would be a faster dissolution rate of the calcareous substrate, and subsequent increased buffering capacity caused by the acidity of the sulfur.

Traditional sulfur reactors use a modest amount of aragonite to buffer the acidic effluent. For your application, a deep sand bed with a series of small 1.5" x 4", passive reactors, spread throughout the sand bed, should have no negative effect on PH.

The idea would have to be closely monitored in one test vat to measure its' merits and limitations, but this seems to be your role in the community. The experiment would require the following conditions and would monitor these parameters.

1) Start with a livestock vat with high, or at least measurable, residual nitrate. That's the easy part.

2) Add two gallons of sulfur beads to a series of 1.5" dia. x 4" long, perforated PVC pipes with pressure fit end caps. Alternatively, you could use 50-75 micron filter media (carbon) bags, but they would clog easily and may be hard to recycle.

3) Bury the reactors evenly throughout the sand bed. If you feel a desire to bury them deeper, you could fill a bucket with aragonite (not calcite) and place a reactor cartridge at the bottom.

4) Measure nitrate in the vat every week until it reaches zero. I would guesstimate this will take a month or two, [b]IF[/] you are using enough sulfur, and [b]IF[/f] the idea works in the first place.

5) Measure PH, alkalinity, magnesium, and calcium to see if they are any more favourable than the other control vats. It's possible that these elements are more bioavailable in the test vat, but are quickly utilized by organisms. A comparison of biomass (quantity of calcareous critters) may confirm this.

6) Check one of the reactors every month to see if the sulfur beads have gone to mush. You should stager the replacement of the sulfur media so you don't lose all of the beneficial bacteria at once. In other words, if you have 12 reactors in the vat, change the media in a different reactor every week (working from one end of the vat to the other in succession), then start again at the beginning. That would give you a 3 month life span of each reactor, while maintaining about 90% of your media as viable. This is a benefit that you don't get with traditional sulfur reactors where you discard all of the sulfur and aragonite media every three months or so. You may get six months out of the media, so adjust the replacement to every two weeks, or whatever it works out to in your case.

7) Monitor similar corals in control vats to see if residual sulfur is a limiting factor and fine tune accordingly. You could also employ the use of a sulfur test kit. Sulfur is one of the few elements that is in deficit in "average marine aquariums". http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-1...ture/index.php

8) If #4 or #5 aren't working out, add more or less sulfur and/or revisit your methods of reactor placement. The same rules for DSB's, carbon-based denitrators, and traditional sulfur reactors apply here; you need an anaerobic zone with passive flow.

9) Report back to us with your results and to get your next assignment.

[Whaledriver]

Has anyone tried drawing waste water out from under under the sandbed? If you had a 12 inch fine sandbed and put a drainage system ant the bottom wouldn't you draw out most of the bad stuff while keeping the bed healthy?

[mr.wilson]

Do a search for "plenum wasting", or go to this thread.

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=289910

[Whaledriver]

Would this be worthwhile in a production system like he's setting up?

[mr.wilson]

I don't see it as necessary, but that's just my opinion. I expained my position, and suggested other options within the thread I linked.

[JCTewks]

with the CWP in the thread that mr wilson mentioned, if it doesn't perform as expected you can always stop using it...so if you wanted to put one in and try it on a tank it would only cost a little bit to build and try out.

In the other thread, no one had done any REAL testing to see if it actuall performed as predicted, or if O2 levels remained low enough in the sand bed for anaerobic digestion.

[Whaledriver]

Worst case scenario its a very slow water change method. This has to be the worst water in the tank! If you use a 2 part system this could be set up to help keep specific gravity from going higher over time.

[mr.wilson]

A system like that would be outperformed by a mechanical filtration method that removed detritus, rather than water.

Raaden,

Have you tried a large, pleated cartridge, diatom filter to remove the phytoplankton yet?

[JCTewks]

I knocked out a tank that looked like a phyto culture on a day with a diatom filter...those kick butt on algea blooms. Make sure you blow off all of the rocks while you are running the diatom filter to gbreak loose any algeal spores that are on there.

Mr wilson: you could do both...well, even if you have a CWP, or any other form of filtration, i think you should have some form of mechanical filtration. I think people have turned away from mech filtration out of pure laziness...heaven forbid you have to rinse something out every couple days I think a lot of good husbrandy practices have been left by the wayside by many caught up in the technology/automation movement.

[mr.wilson]

You're right, mechanical filtration is a lost art.

Back in the early 90's, coral nutrition offered few options. Martin Moe's books clearly illustrated how to set-up rotifer, phytoplankton, and artemia culture systems, but you had to order starter cultures from scientific supply houses, or suck up to a local College.

Authors like julian Sprung convinced us that keeping detritus suspended indefinitely was the best way to provide coral nutrition and reduce nitrate, so mechanical filters had to go.
In reality, the potential reduction in sites for nitrifying bacteria, came at a high price tag of greater accumulation of detritus, which feeds the nitrogen cycle. Considering 80% off the nitrifiers in our systems are attached to detritus, and the fact that they feed on these same nitrogenous compounds, it was one step forward, and two steps back.

Advances in protein skimmer technology (the amazing RS Berlin skimmer) now made mechanical filtration obsolete. They pulled POC right out of the water with no residual nitrate as experienced with biological filtration. Now you just had to dump a cup, instead of rinsing (yes rinsing) a sponge. At the same time, mass hysteria was rampant with the thought that anything that water passed through would foster the growth of nitrifying bacteria and residual nitrate would skyrocket.

It took about 15 years, but hobbyists to slowly realized that corals need a lot more than detritus for nourishment. Now that we have a myriad of live and frozen coral foods to choose from, we can afford to filter excess out, and replenish with the next feeding. Ironically, many of the "modern advances" in coral feeding products are simply freeze dried plankton, run through a coffee grinder. Stephen Spotte's fresh seafood recipe with vitamin, mineral, and amino & faty acids from the late 80's is still the standard used by public aquariums. So technology and methodology haven't really advanced, it just took that long for marketers to catch up.

We have also come to the admission that protein skimmers are not efficient exporters of POC, and a small sponge, bag or pad is not the dreaded "nitrate factory" it was purported to be. Rock and substrate are far more likely to offer a stable site that would harbour aerobic bacteria, and now that we have no means of removing POC, the rock and substrate are the de facto mechanical filter; only you can't simply rinse it and toss it back in like you can with a sponge.

Filter bags took off in popularity a few years back, but they clog in hours, rather than days, and they are increasingly difficult to clean as they age. They don't trap detritus and allow filtered water to pass through. They trap detritus and grind it until POC becomes DOC. You can't beat the good old fashioned sponge or polyester fiber fill sheets. They don't look as impressive as filter bags, but they get the job done.

I remember rinsing my polyester "floss" pre-filter every day or two before they became passe. It was cheap, easy, and effective. The amount of detritus that collected in it, rivaled any of todays over-priced protein skimmers for POC export. After all, surface skimmers are in fact protein skimmers.

I predict that overflow sponges & pads, and pleated cartridge (canister) filters, such as Ocean Clear will have a comeback in the next few years. With the cost of a typical reef system, it's worth it to spend another $125.00 on an Ocean Clear 25 micron filter, even if it's just to periodically polish the water. You can run it on a bypass on your closed loop or return pump.

[JCTewks]

i run a simple one...one of my return lines goes into the body of a marineland powerfilter...I use the standard cartridges and get mechanincal as well as carbon in the same bag not to effective on a 500 gal prop tank...but works on a small scale. where did all of the airlift polyfilters go to?

[hammondo]

Great thread, I have just read it start to end.

My GH in Sydney has posed many of the problems you are experiencing and I thought I would share.

My Ponds are all separate, but I am currently in the propcess of linking them all up to a common sump after about 18 months of separation. The reasons are that I find over time that corals have been moved around from pond to pond and now its all mixed up. This hasn't seemed to cause any problems despite regular cutting of the various types. this will allow me to focus temperature control methods directly to the water to affect the entire system rather than having to focus on the air space or repeating everything for each pond. Also this will simplify protein skimming.

I'm not sure if you have a quantum meter, but I would highly reccomend one. My GH is glass and I have coated it with lime sludge to reduce light intensity, this also had the biggest effect of any single thing on temperature peaks. The hottest day I have had to deal with is 43C (109F) and we got by with a water temp peak of 31C (88F). Fortunately in Sydney, really hot weather is usually not excessively humid so evap cooling works quite well and drops up to 12C off the in coming air temp. The liming of the roof also helped bring down light intensity which is absolutely essential in my opinion.

I use NSW exclusively and the ocean is my last resort for cool water on the hottest days, it also helps that its not too far away ( 20m drive) and I can collect a reasonable quantity. Its a good last resort for me. But possibly not for you with you location.

After linking my ponds to a common sump I plan to use solar water heating in winter to supplement the submerged electric heaters and link in a large reservoir of 5000L (1320g?) to take the water volume of the whole system up to around 12000L. Its my experience with this that the more water the less it will heat up (swimming pool stays very cool through summer). The extra water will be disconnected in winter to reduce heating costs. I have no gas so furnaces are not viable. However I believe that for coral farming to be really viable (especially in Australia) it has to be of low power consumption, and my GH currently uses less power than most single reef tanks. However I think this can be further improved. For the record I use Tunze streams for water movement and no airlifts.

[mr.wilson]

Any updates? It looks like the new photo rule curbed all of the interesting threads in the forum, as I had expected.

[BallaBooyeaH]

Hammondo,

Sydney boy. Where abouts are you from.

I am from Mosman and now living in rieland and looking at a GH as well.

I am currently a wholseller for fish/Corals and rock.

Not wanting to hijack the thread but get to see this going on in the home town.

Andrew

[RedSonja]

Originally posted by mr.wilson
Any updates? It looks like the new photo rule curbed all of the interesting threads in the forum, as I had expected.

What new photo rule? I haven't heard about that.

-Sonja