Tank Build! The rest of the life support finally moved!

Room a couple days but finally moved the rest of my life support and got things set up correctly.



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So the main Sump is on the other side of the wall. It's a 150 gallon stock tank with about 200 lbs of live rick. A float valve for Rodi topoff, a couple lights, and filter socks. It's bilogical filtration as well as a sponge grow out. It feeds the main pump that feeds the tanks. Part of that manifold back feeds out here. From left to right. Medi reactor that houses biopellets feeds up into a recirculating skimmer that supplies the water to the ten. The ten houses another non Recirculating skimmer so two different types of skimmers. The ten feeds the 14 gallon "show" tank, the show tank has some live rock rubble for copepods and amphipods. It is also a grow out tank for phytoplankton. The show tank feeds into the 30 breeder. The 30 breeder is a frag/grow out tank for overstock, trimming or rotating corals. That cuts the need for acclimation when they get switched. This tank has a 300 gph pump that feeds up to the two filter baskets hanging. These are usually filled with carbon on one side and either more carbon, or some other media. Below the 30 is the typhoon 3 extreme. With a secondary di unit that isn't well visible. The 30 will then feed I to a 55 gallon RDSB drum at some point in the next week. For now it just feeds back into the system. The other side of the wall.

The 150 is first scrubbed by the micron filters. The sponges are filter feeders who are kept in check by some snails bristle worms and hermits. This starts the process off by filter feeders cleaning up the particulate matter. Then fed to the skimmers who pull DOC'S and other organics from the water. The copepods and amphipods feed Mainly on the chaeto and bits of algae that grow in Their tank. And the phytoplankton is passed down to the corals. And into the tanks. The coral tank is carbon scrubbed to clear up any chemiclean from the anemones, corals and sponges and passes that water to the RDSB which uses an anaerobic area to process nitrates down. This gives me about the cleanest system with proper weekly 55 Gallo. Water changes. Granted the 90 will be nearly pulled appart soon.

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Let's see. Dts are 65 and 90. Then probably 120 in actual volume sans-serif displacement and flood room. Then 30 14 10. And eventually the 55 which will be about 35 with displacement and probably about 10 in filters and reactors... so about 375 or so in total system volume. I do a 55 gallon water change every week (or week and change. Depends on the weekend.) The water changes are for both nutrient export. Iam a heavy feeder of both fish and coral. And to replenish. I don't dose anything asside from saltwater so the tanks can only stay balanced with proper water transfers.

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And only the lionfish is allowed to poop. And o ly because they are big enough to net out

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Feeding is an art form, and having a properly stocked tank, with the correct cleaning crew, and proper flow can minimize even the largest feeding mishaps. Look at it like this, how often has an established tank had a large fish go missing somewhere in the rock work, and not even created a spike substantial enough to notice the loss? A tank that is properly stocked, and well maintained will very rarely see issues with feeding when fed correctly. you may be surprised what the micro life like pods can do to a dead fish or the crabs shrimp and general bacteria. They will decimate a corpse down past the bone in no time. I have changed substrates out in decades old tanks to not find a single piece of remains from many lost fish. Again feeding is an art, you can certainly feed two to three times a day as every bottle of flake food has ever noted if you do it right. Along those lines, having the proper level of flow in a tank and using proper tank maintenance, like turkey basting your rocks once a week before filter changes, will help to keep any excess food that HAS settled and not been eaten by the crew in a feeding period suspended in the water column enough for it to be mechanically filtered out through filter socks.

I flat out disagree with your comment about too frequent of a water change. There seems to be a misconception that surfaces form time to time about how the water column has a heavy biological load in it, or that the column itself contains enough biological matter to make a substantial difference in the filtration of the system. On a chemical scale, yes, old and stale water will cause problems but as you move up to the macro scale of biology, the amount of actual life in the water column in a home aquarium is relativity very low. Your main biological filtration is handled in substrate, on the walls of your aquarium, in the pipes tanks and tubing and on any rock of features in your tank. The water column itself is generally very sparsely populated. Now this isn't to say that there are no benefits to having an active water column, but by extrapolating the data from
"The Comparative Roles of Suspension-Feeders in Ecosystems: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on The Comparative Roles of Suspension-Feeders in Ecosystems", Nida, Lithuania, 4-9 October 2003 (Richard F. Dame Sergej Olenin March 30, 2006) and working the numbers down to a local level of say 500 gallons when compared to the scale of the actual base. Let alone the ability to acquire the types of life required and outlined in the study (which is illegal in almost all areas). The effects of the population in a reef tank at home are negligible... I personally believe that there is no better maintenance for your tank that a water change. And many follow that axiom in the home aquaria hobby with daily water changes of a given %. There are also mountains of supporting evidence from a farming, ecological and circumstantial hobbyist scale. I know many larger professional aquariums, far and above our hobby, who use a daily water change as part of the system too (on the order of hundreds if not thousands of gallons depending on the locations actual net content) Its important to distinguish at this point that properly mixed water is the main key to any water change, aerated, temperatures and a ph and salinity matches are critical. And if done correctly. But even on the hobby level, let's be realistic, back about 30 years ago a 100% water change was not uncommon as a monthly ritual that included bleaching and scrubbing rocks in the tank followed by weekly water changes to mitigate the constant cycle... And there were many (what we may not consider so now, but at the time) successful tanks around. In the 90's there was the HUGE push for using Ozone, which decimated water column life. In today's world of reefing we have developed yet another entire market sector designated to aerating and agitating DOC's in the column filters out biology through our skimmers. A second market device is that is actively sold to mutilate all biological life in an aquariums water column through the destruction of the DNA replication process of those creatures with the use of UV radiation...

Stating that too many water changes are bad, is a silly concept that I will forever defend against. I am confident enough to say that if you are changing water right, there is no damage you will cause. If you can provide any type of non circumstantial evidence I would be more than happy to entertain the idea that a water change may be harmful, however, until such time, I don't personally think its a good idea to try and spread the misinformation or erroneous idea that a water column is a heavy factor in the aquarium filtration system, or that water changes are dangerous.

 

Posted from a computer! WAY more effecient with one of those!

sent from fone, please excuse miss typed and hippos.