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  #51  
Old 10/24/2003, 10:11 PM
Lofty Lofty is offline
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OK... so heres how I'm doing it....

Get a large sterilite or rubbermaid container (enough to hold all of your rock and corals)

Use a power head and a hose to fill the container with your tank water. (not all the way)

As the container fills carefull start removing rock first (you may have to move around your corals to get to them)

Once you have all the rock in the container and it is fill so that it is covered, you can start moving equipment (powerheads, skimmers and such)

Leave the water thats in your tank there (it counts as a huge water change)

Get your choice of sand (south down or argonite) Make sure you rinse the argonite before you put it in or you will get something that looks like this (I have no idea how long this will take to clear up)
BTW sorry about the pic quality its a cemera phone :P


Here is my Temp setup



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  #52  
Old 10/24/2003, 11:23 PM
tuckz tuckz is offline
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how long must i let it cycle?
  #53  
Old 10/24/2003, 11:24 PM
tuckz tuckz is offline
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i have nearly 130 pounds of LR
i will need a really big container
but i guess this will be the only way?
  #54  
Old 10/24/2003, 11:29 PM
Lofty Lofty is offline
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You sshould not have to go through a cycle.... if the rock stays in the water from your tank its just like doing a massive water cahange, only you are shifting stuff around so that it won't be affected. What you saw in my container was 72 lbs... so if you gate two and put a power head in both and run your skimmer on one and then the other... you shoudh be fine. I am gonna keep it like this untill it settles. Make sure you do your tests though before you go putting stuff back in just as a precaution in case somthing silly happend. hope this helps.... I'm going through it right now so PM me if you ahve any questions about prgress or anything else
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  #55  
Old 10/24/2003, 11:36 PM
Arachnidacolyte Arachnidacolyte is offline
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whats your next topic going to be on waterkeeper? I am on the edge of my seat wating!
  #56  
Old 10/25/2003, 09:38 AM
WaterKeeper WaterKeeper is offline
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Methinks I had better tackle all the sand bed retrofit topics first.

Danial is right on the money when he says you don't have a cycle when adding inert sand to the bed. Cycles are only caused by die off of critters on the LR and LS. If you are adding Southdown then there shouldn't be any effect other than the sand storm. After about a day the sandstorm will have abated to the point where it won't bother the creatures in your tank. In the real reef storms and tidal events create sand storms all the time. The creatures from the reef get through them just fine.

The only effect that you might see is if you have an actively de-nitrifying bed. If you rearrange such a bed you disrupt the anoxic and anaerobic zones that have formed. This can lead to an increase in nitrates for awhile. That is why when you read through threads on RC you see people warning about messing with the bed. In a new, lightly loaded tank it should not pose a problem.

In a pinch you can slope the bed. Say make it 2" up front and 4" in back. It decreases the available surface area but in most cases it is not a major drawback.

When choosing sand you want a fairly fine, "sugar sized" sand. Crushed coral is too course for a proper sand bed. You see it used at the LFS but remember their tanks are only short term holding tanks so they don't worry about an active biological bed. As I stated earlier, silica sand, if it is fine enough, is probably OK to use. My own feeling is that aragonite is better due to the buffering capability of the calcium carbonate that forms it. There is somewhat of an urban legend that surrounds silica sands. It supposedly dissolves to form soluble silicates. There would have to be some pretty weird chemistry happening in one's tank for that to occur. I have heard some people mention that silica sand will react with fluoride in the water. That I guess is possible but it you are using RO/DI, like all good reefers then there shouldn't be any fluoride in the water.

NUBIANTANGLOVER,

That sounds fine for the lighting. There are plenty of good tanks out there that don't use MH. You want to use at least some 03 actinic in your lighting plan. Of course, there are some that say that isn't even necessary with modern high K bulbs.

Arachnidacolyte

I am going to talk about lighting next but don't have time do it today.
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  #57  
Old 10/25/2003, 09:43 AM
tuckz tuckz is offline
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how can i tell the difference between all this kind of sand
the LFS around here dont know anything
  #58  
Old 10/25/2003, 09:46 AM
NUBIANTANGLOVER NUBIANTANGLOVER is offline
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THANKS ALOT WATERKEEPER!!!
  #59  
Old 10/25/2003, 01:25 PM
Lofty Lofty is offline
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Thanks WaterKeeper.

One problem that I ran into. (not reading directions) Just dumped the argonite into the tank and now I have an everlasting milk storm in the tank. I have a small bio filter runnning to try and clear it up but it is really cloudy. Is this gonna be bad or just wait for it to settle?
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  #60  
Old 10/25/2003, 02:52 PM
WaterKeeper WaterKeeper is offline
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NUBIANTANGLOVER

Not being any relation to the Deity when I say, "Let there be light" it doesn't happen very fast.

tuckz,

The usual test for aragonite is the "vinegar test". If you pour vinegar on some it bubbles up and fizzes. Leave it sit in some vinegar and it will eventually dissolve. This only happens with limestone based minerals like aragonite and calcite

Daniel,

No matter how careful one is there is always a sandstorm when adding new sand. It will clear up on its own over a couple of days or you can speed things up by using a polishing cartridge in a canister filter. You'll need some vinegar here also to clean the filter cartridge. It will plug up very fast. Remember to rinse it well after soaking in vinegar.

In a new tank it doesn't take much to stir up the bed. I think someone already mentioned that, over time, a bacteria film forms on the sand particles. These bacteria secrete various polymers that act as a glue and keep the sand storms in check in an established tank. As I said earlier today. After about 24 hours you can put any critters you have back into the tank without harm. A good old turkey baster can be used to blow any sand off the rock etc. I never thought I'd have to say this but I recently saw a new reefer using a baster. He took it out of the tank and filled it with air each time he squeezed it. Fill it with water and the water stream will do a much better job at cleaning stuff.

Oh, by the way. If rinsing a fine sand like Southdown don't get too carried away. You'll lose most of it down the drain it you rinse it too hard. Some people say you shouldn't rinse it at all as the very fine particles are good for the bed too.
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Last edited by WaterKeeper; 10/25/2003 at 02:59 PM.
  #61  
Old 10/26/2003, 04:08 PM
Lofty Lofty is offline
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See thats the problem.... I didnt rinse the argonite and am wondering if it will have a detremental effect on the tank and inhabitants if I were to put them in.... it mostly settled as of this morning but I needed to level it out and started again. I moved a few of my larger rocks in there along with a powerhead to get some sort of filter going and it seems to be working. Everything is doing fine in the temporary tank so should I just wait?

Also i got a mini spike of ammonia it went from .25 to .5 so sould I wait till that levels out?
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  #62  
Old 10/27/2003, 10:59 AM
WaterKeeper WaterKeeper is offline
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Daniel,

Hang in there. The current PC thinking is not to rinse the aragonite. It won't hurt anything by not rinsing it and may be beneficial. As long as you are arranging things the sandstorm will continue. Your in no rush so get things how you want them and then let it settle. As far as adding things back into the tank the sandstorm is not a real issue. The ammonia you are seeing is. I'd hold off taking anything out of quarantine until the ammonia again reaches zero.
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  #63  
Old 10/27/2003, 11:47 AM
WaterKeeper WaterKeeper is offline
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Well, I remember by first, and only, intimate experience with a woman. It was years ago in a bar in L.A. She came over to me in her fishnet stockings, short skirt and whispered in my ear the immortal words, "Hey big boy got a light?". Well after the most exciting five minutes of my life I left her room and looked at my, now near empty, wallet. Then it dawned on me. For what that five minutes had cost "I could of had some of those new fangled actinic lights for my tank!!!"

I have left out lighting until this point, as until you start stocking your tank it is not all that important. If you bought a complete set-up it probably came with a hood and fluorescent lights. To keep LR and fish alive you really don't need much more.

Coralline on LR is a low light alga so it doesn't require megawatts to sustain it. Fish, for the most part, are pretty much indifferent to light levels.

The bulbs that come with most tanks are standard fluorescent types that you can get in any Lowe's or Home Depot. The drawback is they have a K value of only about 4000-4500. Not a very good level for a marine tank.

So you say, "What the expletive deleted is a K?"

K stands for Kelvin, which is a temperature scale in the metric system. It is similar to Celsius but zero starts at absolute zero. Armed with that bit of trivia you say, "So what!".

The use of Kelvin ratings for illumination comes from the photo industry. They needed a scale to measure the apparent color of light and chose the K scale to do it. To understand it, picture a black ball suspended in an inert atmosphere. We start to heat it up until it glows. At first it becomes red hot, then orange, yellow white and so on as it gets hotter. The temperature that is needed in Kelvin degrees defines these changes in color. That standard fluorescent used around the house gives off a Kelvin of around 4500 K. This is a decidedly yellow color. Experiments with reef tanks have also indicated that the wavelength (I'm not even going to touch angstroms and such ) produced by such a low K value is not conducive to good critter growth in our tanks.

Now there are some household type fluorescents that have fairly high K values. The Opti-lume daylight series comes to mind. These are fairly cheap bulbs and have color outputs closer to 6500 K. This is pretty close to the K temp for sunlight. If you can find some they are a better solution than the "standard" bulbs. You can also buy bulbs especially designed for aquarium use over the Internet or at the LFS. They cost more than the household bulbs but have higher K values, as high as 20,000 K, which produces a very blue light. To me the real high K tubes are too blue. I prefer the lights with a range 8000-12,000 K which is more white than blue. As far as your tank is concerned it doesn't make much difference. The blue light is just as good as white. What K value you use is a matter of what looks best to you. One other thing with high K fluorescents tubes is that higher K lights give off less illumination than lower K tubes. You may opt for a 10,000K over a 20,000K just because you get more bang for your energy buck with the lower K tube.

Let's take a second to see how a fluorescent tube works. The tube has a starter element on each end and is filled with a gas that contains a small amount of mercury. When we turn it on an initial surge of high voltage is sent to the tube and creates a flow of electrons from the elements. This causes a current to flow through the tube and produces a cloud of ionized particles. The inner part of the tube is coated with a phosphorus compound. Electrons in the ionized cloud strike the phosphorus and cause it to glow creating light. Now, when the current starts to flow in the gas inside the tube, the resistance drops real fast. The amount of current would increase and the tube would glow brighter and brighter. It would do that until it burned itself out in very short order . Enter the ballast.

You've all seen a ballast, at least I hope. It is the brick like thing inside the hood of a fluorescent light. It serves two purposes. First is contains a capacitor or some other circuit that provides the initial high voltage to get the lamp started. Once the lamp is started it contains a coil, called a choke, which limits the amount of current (called impedance for those that dig tech terms ) that will go to the lamp and saves the lamp from burning up.

In our discussions of aquarium lighting we will be dealing with ballasts. And, as usual with everything in this hobby, we will be dealing with several types, some which do the very same job but in an entirely different way.

Enough about ballasts for the moment. Let's get back to the lights themselves. The household type fluorescent is called an N.O. or normal output type lamp. N.O. lamps use 10 watts for every foot of length. That is a 24" is 20 watts and a 48" is 40 watts. That is for a T12 bulb. "A 'T' what?" you say. Well the T number is the diameter of the bulb in eighths of an inch. Household type bulbs are usually T12's that means it is 12/8ths or 1½ inches. The other common sizes are the 1" T8 and the 5/8" T5.

For the reefer that only is going to keep fish or some of the lower light soft corals, then N.O. lighting may be sufficient. For those wanting a more diverse tank, more bang for the buck will be needed.

We'll talk about that next time.
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Last edited by WaterKeeper; 10/27/2003 at 11:58 AM.
  #64  
Old 10/27/2003, 03:41 PM
braydenspoppa braydenspoppa is offline
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ooohhh goodie... lemme know when you'll get down and dirty with lighting...i wanna get the popcorn ready.
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  #65  
Old 10/27/2003, 03:50 PM
mike4271 mike4271 is offline
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" I'm not even going to touch angstroms "

I should hope not, you should have learned your lesson in that bar in L.A.
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  #66  
Old 10/27/2003, 04:04 PM
sarilouisa sarilouisa is offline
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yahoo- some great information was found in these pages- thanks
  #67  
Old 10/27/2003, 05:43 PM
WaterKeeper WaterKeeper is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by mike4271
" I'm not even going to touch angstroms "

I should hope not, you should have learned your lesson in that bar in L.A.
Luv it Mike.

It just so happens I have a bit more time to add to the above. I'm adding to the thread on the fly so I add on as I can.

When talking about the L.A. experience I mentioned actinic lighting. I should explain what is meant by it. Back in the earlier days of reefkeeping the fluorescent bulbs used where pretty much the same as you used around the house. It was quickly found by those trying to establish a reef tank that they did not provide proper light for the symbiotic algae in many corals. The result was that many corals died in the home aquarium. Similar problems where known in the public aquariums. The first major breakthrough was the actinic tube. A true 03 actinic produces a color of around 7300 K, which would put in white area of lighting. However the phosphor's used in these actinics produced a distinct blue shade when used on a marine tank. They also tended not to illuminate the glass and water while highlighting the fish and corals and making them stand out. Another result was that they cause some phosphorescence in corals as an added bonus.

Well, you can imagine the hit they made. They also were a hit for the tube manufactures as they got BIG money for them. Today there are all sorts of phosphors used to produce various color temperatures. The so-called tri-phosphers tubes are a direct result of better color tubes for TV. As you know a color TV gets its color by using red, green and blue phosphors to create all the other shades of color. By doing the same it was possible to make fluorescent lamps that had much high K values than the normal household lamp. Today tubes are offered as high as 20,000K using tri-phosphor blends.

There is another improvement that many do not notice. In the original tri-phosphor tubes it was not unusual for one phosphor, usually the one that produces blue, to weaken in intensity before the others. The result was a downward shift in color temperature as the tube aged. Improved phosphors now have, while not eliminating it, given much longer life to tubes than their forefathers. I've seen reports that even bulbs up to two years old show little spectral shift.

Now so far we've talked about color. Another important aspect of lighting is how bright it is. To get good results with many corals in these early fluorescent tanks you needed to pack the bulbs into the hood. With a tank having good front to back depth you could get around eight T12 tubes in with a bit of shoe horning. Fortunately there was also help along these lines. Commercial lighting often needed brighter lighting than the N.O. fluorescent could deliver. Bulb manufacturers where able to provide this using bulbs that ran at twice the wattage (High Output or H.O.) or even almost 3 times the wattage (Very High Output or V.H.O.). Now a 24" T12 VHO could run at 75 watts rather than 20 and a 48" VHO at 110 watts as opposed to 40. This saved space while greatly increasing brilliance.

To this point I've skirted defining light intensity. The reason is that it is confusing as hell

The gods of physics, that control lighting measurements, come up with a new measurement unit on an about once a week basis. Well, maybe not that often. They have candlepower, lux, lumens and PAR; all with different units and measurement methods. One of my favorites is PAR or Photosynthetic Active Radiation. If you have a gadget called a Quantum meter in your reef tank test kit bag then you are ahead of the rest of us who have no idea of the number of micromoles of quanta per second per square meter entering their tanks at the moment.

How the REAL scientists rely on the old "watts per gallon" method. Sure you hear how terrible and inaccurate this method is but the scientific proof is that it works pretty good in a pinch. So there!!!

The rule of thumb is to have a minimum of 4 watts per gallon in any tank. Six watts per gallon in a coral tank and a whooping 8+ watts per gallon in a tank with clams, anemones and certain stoney corals.

Hey, it is not rocket science but you won't see too many people complain that follow this rule. There are some points here. The above is based on a 24" high tank. You can lower this output somewhat with an 18" tank and raise it if you have a 30". Also fluorescent lights are usually placed right at the water surface. When we get to metal halides this is not the case so again some extra watts may be needed. It is only a general rule and as any NEWBIE will tell you-"rules are made to be broken".

For most reefers the use of VHO will be the most common. HO lights are available but they don't save much in money when compared to VHO so why mess with their lower output.

Gotta go but we'll get back to VHO and the dialing for $$$ question for buying ballasts to run them.
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Last edited by WaterKeeper; 10/27/2003 at 05:57 PM.
  #68  
Old 10/28/2003, 08:49 PM
Lofty Lofty is offline
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How About Power comparcts WaterKeeper?
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  #69  
Old 10/29/2003, 12:20 AM
CrystalAZ CrystalAZ is offline
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Hey Waterkeeper!

Your info on lights is great, but you kinda left me hanging at the algae bloom...

Once the algae bloom is in full swing and I get some crabs and snails and do some big water changes, what happens next?

How long after this should I wait before adding a fish?



Crystal
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  #70  
Old 10/29/2003, 09:44 AM
WaterKeeper WaterKeeper is offline
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Crystal,

What algae? I've been peeking at your tank pics and I don't see any REAL algae bloom.

I guess the kindest words I can give one on an algae bloom are, "This too shall pass.". Just like it starts out of nowhere, the bloom clears and disappears. This assumes that you run your skimmer, do the water changes etc. When your bed starts de-denitrifying it soon depletes the available nitrate that fuel the bloom. All this takes some time. The less nutrients in the water column going into the bloom, the shorter and less intense the bloom. If your ammonia level is consistently at zero you can add your first fish.

Fish get along very well with algae in the tank and most love to snack on it.

Daniel

PC's are coming in the next instalment. I plan to talk first about VHO, then PC and T5 will complete the section on fluorescent. Then it is on to MH.
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  #71  
Old 10/29/2003, 08:46 PM
CrystalAZ CrystalAZ is offline
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No, my algae bloom hasn't started yet. I am just getting ready for it and want to know how to proceed from there.

Crystal
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  #72  
Old 10/29/2003, 11:27 PM
strat89 strat89 is offline
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hey waterkeeper, i am new to this site ( i signed up almost a year ago but then moved countries, and a bunch of other stuff yada yada yada) but now im back and luvvin it. ive been reading posts here for about a week, starting to neglect the wife (doh), and learning lots.. anyways, my point. i was reading this awesome thread again tonight incl your newest posts and i realized i hadnt said thanks. so here goes.......... thanks very mcuh and please keep it coming. ttyl

strat
  #73  
Old 10/30/2003, 06:26 PM
WaterKeeper WaterKeeper is offline
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Well thank you very much stat.

To Reef Central
Quote:
Originally posted by strat89
( i signed up almost a year ago but then moved countries...
You are the first one I've heard of that was deported for reading my posts but it sure beats being thrown in jail as are most of my avid readers.

Quote:
Originally posted by CrystalAZ
No, my algae bloom hasn't started yet. I am just getting ready for it and want to know how to proceed from there.
Dang Crystal,

You of all people by now know how to do a proper search on RC. Ok, this once I'll do it for you--
RK Magazine tells you "What to do About Algae"
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  #74  
Old 10/30/2003, 08:51 PM
CrystalAZ CrystalAZ is offline
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WC... of COURSE I know how to do a search. I do them every day!

I was looking specifically for a continuation of your wonderfully informative and humorous guide.

Crystal
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  #75  
Old 10/30/2003, 08:52 PM
CrystalAZ CrystalAZ is offline
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(He can't pick on me while I am sucking up, can he?)

Hehehehehehe
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