Mikejrice 30g *Finished*

After running the little Aquatraders skimmer for about 24 hours, I'm ready to draw some conclusions. It works! $30 and it works. On my system with about 60 gallons total it doesn't seem to be enough though. It pulled about 1/4 cup of nasty looking skimmate overnight, but when I turned the Coralife 125 back on today it quickly began foaming and picking out everything the little skimmer missed. On a smaller system though I really think this could be a viable cheap option.

The Coralife 125 is back up on my tank. I set it up HOB on the back of the tank to make room for a new and bigger skimmer to go in the sump. I'm planning on running the Coralife 125 extremely dry. It's set up so that it recirculates water by hanging the output over a baffle going backwards. The other skimmer will be in the sump running medium dry to pull the majority of the gunk out of the system.

 

My new extreme overkill skimmer is in and bubbling away like I can't believe. More details to come soon. In light of the new found overkill of my filtration I've decided to go back to my overstocking ways, but in a whole new fashion. I've been reading a lot lately about the effects of over-saturating a tank with one species and thus removing most aggression within that species. Today I added two small male clowns bumping my count up to four in my 30 gallon. My theory is they will be busy establishing ranks within their group, and won't have any need for aggression towards other fish. If I confirm that they are acting less aggressively towards the other fish in the tank I plan on adding a school of non-aggressive fish also. I'm thinking a small school of cardinals. That would put my stocking list at:

four percs
one scooter blenny
one flasher wrasse
one yellow watchmen
one rainfords goby
five cardinals
one huge sebae nem

WAY overstocked. It should give the tank an awesome look if it works out.

I also started up my frag tank again in the sump. I'm planning on doing some major kenya tree fragging just for fun. They will most likely go to whoever wants them for free.

 

I have a 30g. You give me hope of having something AWESOME one day!

 

Thank you. It takes time, but I'm sure you will get there.

 

Looks Great!

 

You might want to reconsider. I brought up oxygen content on my local board, but was told while the air here is thin, that there is still plenty in salt water.

I repeated that but was then corrected. There is some info out there about what fish need and what water can hold at what temp and what salinity. Well sure enough, I'm on the low range of that. I didn't take it as gospel, but it did make me rethink. I move a lot of air with my skimmer, good flow, but I'm a little high on salinity at 1.026 and I think my tank likes 80 over 78. Well 1.026 and 80 degrees at 6000ft holds a lot less oxygen than sea level.

So I am just regularly stocked. Considered changing my parameters. I don't want my fish to suffocate during a power outage. The power was out to my house for 8 hours while I changed out my service. They made it but they were all gasping when I turned the power back on.

Stocking limitations are determined by oxygen, not filtration. We simply have less of it up here.

 

Thank you for bringing me to my senses Powerman. When I thought up this theory I figured my overpowered skimmer coupled with the 60 gallons of very shallow water would suffice to keeping the O2 levels in my tank good. I hadn't considered the fact that water can only hold up to a certain amount of O2 at one time. My water is between 78 and 80 degrees and I also keep my salinity at about 1.024. I still think I could pull it off, but the return pump I'm running right now doesn't turn the tank over as fast as I would like and thus doesn't bring in enough freshly skimmed water fast enough.

K+ for shooting me down

 

Like I said... I was just too close to the line for comfort. Something like ocean levels being 10 or so... fish start to suffer at 5... I'm at like 7. Don't quote me on theose numbers, but that is the spread. I wish I would have bookmarked it. I'll try to find it.

I guess what I got out of it is regular is fine for me, but I don't want to be heavily stocked. If I was, I would have to lower my salinity and temp... and my corals seem happier the way it is. I had my temp at 78... and they just didn't seem to be as happy. I suppose now that I know more I could try it again.

And yes I would have more fish if I could. My filtration would certainly support more.

Right now in my 90g I have 3 chromis, 3 anthias, 1 yellow t, one small blue t, coral beauty, blenny, and 6 line. The Blue tang will grow more so I figure thats it.

 

I was trying to find info and actually found this calculator.

Oxygen Saturation Calculation Based on Temperature and Elevation

At 35 ppt, and 26.7C and 6000ft.... O2 SATURATION is only 5.274!!!

Fish die at 2. Here are some numbers of sea water.

Reefs.org: Where Reefkeeping Begins on the Internet - Oxygen Saturation

 

Here's what the numbers said for me:

Salinity=36 Temperature=26 Elevation= 5,281
Dissolved Oxygen corrected for elevation = 6.620 (mg/L)

Seems like the elevation between you and me makes a huge difference.

That's quite an eye opener though. I never considered how much different stocking at high elevation is than at sea level. I'm moving to Nevada...