anDew 55gal w/ new sump/refugium

Nvm. I tested it. It did not work. The water would back up into the Skimmer tray. I will need to redesign pipes and change the height level of where I position the Skimmer. I need the water level to go no higher than the water return.
Live and learn.

 

Do you target feed the star fish? A starfish that size will definitely starve in a refugium, or even the display tank without target feeding.

 

Anytime you add plumbing to the output of a pump, the more bends you put in it, and the more length of pipe you add, adds head pressure to the pump. The pump in your skimmer isn't designed for additional plumbing, and it will not handle additional head pressure very well. This will make the pump flow less water, and therefore make your skimmer less efficient and draw more power.

 

I gives him freeze dried krill every few days. He is doing great.

 

Add sun coral to the tank mate list.

Anyone know how long it takes before they come out from hiding?

 

Going skimmerless.
I read many threads about it making the corals huge so I thought I would give it a shot. Besides my water parameters are perfects and my refugium plant has doubled in size. I also moved the chocolate chip starfish in the 1st chamber of my sump instead of in the refugium.
The sun coral I picked up had 4 frags attached to it unaware to the pet shop owner and myself including mushroom pollyps and brain coral.
I added some pics.

 

Refugium after 2 weeks. Millions of copepods.
I also put the choco starfish in the sump instead of the refuge. Skimmer has been off about a week and the coral growth is explosive. I still dose calcium and trace elements. The cheato in the fuge grows nearly 2 inches a day. About every 2 days I replace evaporated water in the return chamber w/ treated tap water because I don't have an ro-id filter.

 

Skimmerless/No water changes, setup update.

Its been nearly 3 weeks since I axed the skimmer and levels in the tank are stable. Coral growth is the most rapid I have ever seen. The refugium plant continues to flourish and it now looks like a wild jungle. After recently changing the carbon I noticed a huge improvement in the color of the water, from a slight yellow tint to a noticeable clear. Green algae has started to coat the glass of my DT and is not easy to scrape off.

Red Cyano bacteria has also started to increase in my DT. I was hoping once my refugium plant started to grow bigger that it would remove nutrients from the water that the Cyano bacteria feed off of. I thought about constructing an algae scrapper but do not want to deal with the maintenance of cleaning it.

Red Cyano bacteria practically covers the entire bottom of my refugium, however recently I have started to see an increase of green algae and less red algae.

Aside from replacing the evaporated water with treated tap water (I do not have an RO-ID filter) I have done no water changes in the nearly three months it is been up and running.

Does anyone know the best way to rid stuck on green algae?

 

11/16/11 Skimmerless Experiment Update

Skimmer less, No water changes with Refugium Experiment Update.

Since my last reply there has been a lot of change in my aquarium. One of my skunk cleaner shrimp died but the other one lives. I believe he died from a bad molt but am unsure. Both of feather dusters have perished however the offspring of those feather dusters is growing rapidly. I have 2 rapidly growing baby feather dusters that look identical to the ones which died.
To combat the green algae I hooked up a 9watt UV encased light. After about a week I noticed a significant decrease in green and red (cyano) algae. It seems some of my refugium plant disappeared after connecting the UV light but the water looks crystal clear.

Just the other day my sand sifter starfish turned himself inside out and then literally disintegrated.

The rest of the coral, fish, and anemone are doing great. I test my water regularly and I tested with two different test kits once my sand sifter died. Once again the levels are pristine. Salinity good, no nitrates, no ammonia, plenty of calcium, PH stable; the only level which was off was a little high was phosphorous but after hooking up the UV light the phosphorous level was lower than previous weeks.

Countless threads warn that with no skimmer and no water changes its high nitrates and ammonia levels which kill fish and invertebrates.

Considering that the water levels seem to be stable, and my phosphorous levels are the lowest they have ever been, why are my invertebrates dying?

Rather what is going on in my tank?

 

No water changes, No skimmer

UPDATE!

2 weeks ago I finally went to walmart and purchased two 5 gallon jugs of distilled water. I engineered my own gravity fed auto top off to use with the distilled water. As the return chamber in my refugium evaporates water is automatically topped off. Since using distilled water and not tap water I have noticed that my tank is looking better and clearer than ever.

I did not do any water change, i'm simply replacing evaporated water.

My mushrooms have gone from 3 to 11. My branch coral tripled in size and and already has an off spring that is growing. Basically all of my corals except my suncoral and star pollyps are doing great!

Levels are the same except phosphorus which is down.

The rest of the fish are doing great including the chocolate chip starfish.

I'll take some pictures once the cyano is gone. I think one more week of distilled water oughta do it. I plan on using only distilled water now.