Good afternoon!

Hi everybody

I'm new to the site, so I'll give you as much information as I can manage to type in one sitting, explaining my setup and my philosophy of aquarium keeping.

Just to give you some background, I live in NC and have been running multiple tanks since 2003. I have a 46 gallon bow front, a 75 gallon tank that I'm setting up for just plants, and a 180 in my living room.

The tanks have been up for about 9 months, after a multi-state move, but I'm just now getting around to stocking them. I didn't cure the rock for the 180 long enough after the move and I had some RO problems (see below), so for a while, my nutrient levels spiked. I believe in natural forms of filtration, combined with lots of water changes, but this was an extraordinary situation and now I'm putting a bunch of grazers in the tank to tackle hair algae.

I had some water issues. My old RO unit's membrane expired and the company was out of business, so I bought a new system off eBay from AquaSafe Canada. My old one was a 75 gpd system and the new one would have been a 150 gpd system... if it had put out more than 2 gallons per day. Since tech support emails came at 3 month intervals, I finally bought a Merlin RO system 3 months ago.

Let me tell you something.... I paid $350 for GE's "Merlin" RO with shipping.... yes, that is expensive (and I am a REAL cheapskate normally), but having 750 gpd is awesome. It only produces waste water when you have the faucet open.... this is an on-demand system. In fact, if I had known that the Merlin would work so well, I would have put in a large holding tank in the garage and used the Merlin to filter water for the whole house. It is that good.

The only bad thing about the Merlin system is that it uses larger tubing than a standard RO, so I had to change my fittings out. it also means that a standard DI canister won't connect (it will use 1/4 tubing and Merlin's output is 3/ eighths. I just finished building my own Di canister and need to wait a couple of days for the silicon to cure on the "bead screen" before putting it in-line. Of course, when I ordered my resin, I found out that the company I was buying from could have supplied me with canisters that would work, but, oh well.

Like I said, I am just now stocking my tanks. Normally, only blue-collar fish go into tanks I own. By that, I mean they have to be working fish, that help keep the tank clean. I always have yellow tangs, because they are my favorite fish, but also because they crop hair algae. I have a school of 5 coming tomorrow. I also have 3 lawnmower blennies and 8 Mexican turbo snails.

Of course, I have a roommate now, and she really hoped I'd get a pair of clownfish for one of the tanks, so I'm adding them. Usually, if I have clownfish, I get 6 or 8 juveniles and set up 2 groups, a breeding pair and a pair of juvies in each group. I also added a flame hawk for her to play with.

I also like to run my own phytoplankton and rotifer cultures (for feeding fry and just because I think it is interesting). Oddly enough, I've never had a lot of success with brine shrimp. You can have a 6 year old raising sea monkeys out the kazoo, but I never manage to get more than a couple of hatches done. I've recently ordered a different style hatchery and am going to give it a try again.

Plant tank! I mentioned I have a 75 gallon that I am going to set up with plants. The 75 g was the first saltwater aquarium I ever set up and it's moved with me over and over through the years. This time, I'm going to toss some play sand in the bottom, populate the bed with some live rock rubble and a little sand from my other tanks, and I'll set it up sort of as a "display refugium" in my dining room.

I've raised LPS, SPS, and softies, clams, you name it, but I like macro algaes more than corals. I also like sponges and flame scallops. I am fascinated by micro fauna. The greater the diversity in my tank, the happier I am. In fact, I woke up one morning and a plant tank that I'd been running for three years, with nothing added except chopped shrimp and high nutrient water from another tank's water change, was crawling with white brittle stars, snails, and starfish all over the glass. The largest starfish I saw in that tank grew to half the size of a dime, but it was the most interesting environment I've ever set up. I won't even go into all the pods, micro-crabs, and so on.

That's what I'm going for with the current "plant tank." Also, I'll use fresh ulva (sea lettuce, which is what is dried to make nori) to feed the herbivores in my 180 after they polish off the hair algae. My dual goals are always to have attractive tanks and to have very fat herbivores. I'm also going to grow "shaving brush" plants because I like them.

When I've done this setup in the past, I have had a great deal of success. Basically, I perform water changes in the main tank and use part of the water removed for a sort of "reverse water change" in the plant tank. This is the same process as using a refugium to export nutrients, except that I move the water by bucket instead of by pump and pipe. I stopped doing this a couple of years ago, however, as I'd moved the 75g to my office after selling a condo and moving to a smaller apartment. The house I'm in has plenty of room for tanks now, so I'm starting the system up again.

One big change to my system this time around, though, is the filtration of my 180. This tank is not drilled and has tempered glass, so I used to work with an acrylic overflow box (hang on) to send water to my home-made sump (40 gallon breeder). The sump had a small chamber filled with rubble that acted as a trickle filter, a large refugium chamber, and another small chamber with a magdrive 24. I had a custom PVC T on the magdrive's return, which feed 95% of the flow back to the aquarium and 5% to a Rubbermaid trashcan with 240 pounds of play sand, which returned water to the refugium chamber. I changed the sand out every 6 months or so.

I broke the partitions I'd put into the sump by accident during the move and I never liked the noise from the magdrive, so I've been using a canister filter on the tank. I started with a Rena Filstar XP4 and added a second before stocking the fish. I don't really like to use chemicals in my tank, and this uses activated carbon along with a phosphate remover, but the tank is a ton quieter. To make up for the lost flow, I added a couple of Hydor 2400 gph powerheads.

That trashcan full of sand that I mentioned was key for nitrate removal in my system. I was able to double my tank feedings by adding it, which made a huge difference in the amount of micro fauna in the system. I'm going to build a custom one for my current "overflow-less" setup (with a very slow pump and a perfect seal) or I may try modifying a canister filter and use sand in a mesh bag. The real key to making one of these work is in having low water flow and no light.

I don't have a lot of pictures right now, but I plan to take some before and after shots to see how the grazers do with the hair algae in the tank. In the mean time, here is a picture of my 180g as it is set up now.

 

hello nice book for first post hopefully you saved something for later. he he. any who welcome

 

thanks :-D

 

Welcome aboard! Sounds like your off to a good start. 180 is looking nice!

 

Actually, that is an early pic. Right now, there are lots of fluffs of hair algae. I've pulled a lot out by hand, but I decided to get my fish and let them handle it (I hope they're hungry after their trip tomorrow).

Edit... hey, I just noticed where you are from. My "multi-state move" was from Coconut Creek to NC. If I had known how much I'd miss the LFS, I might not have moved.

 

Welcome to 3reef, hope you enjoy your stay!
WOW that is quite a story for your first post. Great looking tank.

 

Holy crud nice first post!

 

Welcome to 3reef!!!

 

Welcome to 3Reef>>>>>>>