Starting Again - All Ideas Very Welcome

[nilocmal]

Hello,

I converted my tank from tropical to marine in summer 2006. Since then i've upgraded this, that, and the other, as you do. There's been good times, bad times, tedious times, and now, i'm ready to throw in the towel and start again. The tank is currently riddled with green hair algae , which replaced the cyano infestation, which in turn replaced the bubble algae that dominated for a while. All through this the water has been spot on, nothing in there that shouldn't be, everything in there that should be. A friend recently identified the cause of the problem - the tank sits in direct sunlight. Looks nice when the sun shines on it, but there's always some sort of algae taking over the whole damn tank, which is a 240 litres juwel number, and not really ideal for marine use in the first place. Good learning ground though.

So 'm going to have another go at it. To this end i'm going to buy a whole new setup, and site it away from any direct light. I'm thinking 100 Gallons or thereabouts, roughly 5ft x 2ft x 1.5ft (water depth). I'm also thinking sump, which i've never had, and i'm also thinking halides (currently t8's). i'm thinking closed loop for circulation or maybe one of those SCWD things. Maybe go hell for leather and get a UV steriliser, calcium reactor, any and every bell and whistle available.

The point is over the last 18 months i've forgotten why i got into this in the first place, which is to look at fish and corals and shrimps and such like. Instead i'm constantly looking at new skimmers, heaters, circulation methods, rodi units, etc. and the actual livestock have taken a back seat. No more. I figure if i get everything in place from the start of the new tank, i can get back to checking out beautiful fish and more importantly for me anyway, corals.

So, what would the good folks here suggest, kit wise ? clean slate, money an object but not a huge one. What would you have, what would you avoid, what would you not progress without, what's nice but not essential, and so on ?

All thoughts and efforts greatly appreciated.

Cheers folks.

 

[Adrinal]

sunlight? sunlight = good

uncontrolled nutrients is the issue. Forget that sunlight is bad stuff... k let me read the rest of your post

 

[Adrinal]

You need a game plan. then tweak it, then post it, then tweak it... and in the end stick with something.

You can't do all the animals specifically, you have to do some animals specifically.

A softy tank is not a sps tank is not a mangrove tank is not a fish only tank is not a... get the picture? What do you really want in there?


Make it easy to do water changes.... it takes a lot of water changes to equal the cost of one usless tool


Sump = tool chest upgrade


sump biger than tank itself = super bonus round

cryptic (no light) live rock or rubble rock = extra wepons

~ 4 x return from sump and 40+x turnover with high flow low pressure pumps = standard and neccesary weapon

sand IN the tank = FTL stink bomb

Lighting = neccessary but so far down on importiance that if u dont get the others right... no use asking the question.

 

[nilocmal]

Thanks Ad,

sunlight = good ? Since i had it pointed out to me this was in fact bad as it promotes algae growth (the bain of my existence) i've found nothing on the internet to contradict that, until you came along yesterday ! Are you telling me direct sunlight is not the root cause of my ongoing algae / cyano battles ? Because if it's not, then bearing in mind i've never had any detectable phosphate, and nitrate has never been more than 5 ppm, where's it coming from ?

Water changes - I've been changing 20% every weekend for the last 3 months.

In a bid to get rid of the algae, I've not switched the lights on for a nearly a month now. As for food, i now feed once per week. I think it's reducing the green hair algae a bit, might be wishful thinking on my part though.

sand IN the tank = FTL stink bomb - I'm not sure what FTL means, but are you saying i shouldn't use sand as substrate in the tank ?

i was hoping for some general consensus here but i'm more confused than ever !

 

[xxBarneyxx]

I'm new to the saltwater side of things so what I say is not really based on first hand experience but what I have read and heard from others over the last 6 months (I have spent a long time looking into marine setups and still dont have a big tank going ).

Tank size: Yep good size
Sump: As mentioned a big bonus, you can stick a fuge in there and added water volume is always a good thing.
Circulation: Depends on what you are keeping but you should turn over the volume of water in the tank at leats 20 times and hour (more for some corals).
Lights: Again depends on what you want. Most soft corals will do fine under T5's but in a tank of that size I imagine that eventually you will want SPS or LPS corals so you might as well get MH lights from the start (Personally I'm actually going to go for an LED setup. TMC apprently have a unit in the works which is going to rock).
Sand: this seems to be a never ending debate. Pesonally I like sand in a tank, I think it looks better and I believe that many marine animals do better with it then without it. On the other side of it though there are good reasons to go for a bare bottom setup. You get less waste build up and it is easier to clean. If Adrinal is who I think he is (I might be confused ) he has a bare bottom tank that does look really good.

UV and reactors - These are things that can be added later and while they help you will probably do fine without them for at least the first few months. Get the rest of the stuff right first though. Would be a very good idea to set up a QT as well for new fish.

Sunlight on the tank: I must admit I never understood why it was an issue on a marine tank either. It could potentially cause overheating but I never understood why adding enough lights to a tank to light up a football picth is fine and sun light is bad (arent we trying to recreate natrual sunlight)? I'm probably missing something but I can say that my planted tank gets direct sunlight for about 4 hours a day and has been fine (only algae issues have been due to other problems).

i was hoping for some general consensus

I wouldnt hold your breath While there are a lot of points that almost every agrees on there are a lot more that people disagree on All you can do is read up as much as possible and go with what makes sense to you.

I would suggest the same as Adrinal, have a good think about what you would really like in there, work out what your budget is and then start looking at what you need to get to keep the livestock that you want.

 

[shibby]

adrinals post even confused me, i thought i had entered donkey kong or mario.

sunlight will probably of coursed increased algae problems, im not enitirely sure why but i guess it creates alot of algae in the wild too.


i like sand in the tank its just harder to clean i think you cant vacuum it too well. tanks a good size, get the tank drilled. your probably want a 3foot sump or there abouts for that size tank.

get circulation to around 20x-30x could do that with the closed loop quite easily.

 

[nilocmal]

Thanks for your thoughts guys.

When i put my tank where it is, i knew it was in direct sunlight, but like you barney i figured what the hell. We're trying to recreate natural conditions so why not add a little sunlight ? With hindsight, that was my biggest mistake on this whole salty journey.

Can you help me out with closed loops please guys ? Other than being "a good thing" I'm not too sure what they consist of.

 

[chrissaysyes]

It doesnt make much sense to me that sunlight alone could cause some huge algae outbreak. You know a lot of tanks--unless treated from the jump with phosphate remover--will experience a lot of algae growth...I think the majority of the people here have had experience with battling green hair. The trick seems to be finding the source and removing it, be it phosphates, a dead fish under a rock somewhere, or bad light cycles. Then pick that crab out of there with your hands and a set of chop sticks, eventually your clean up crew will catch up with you and cut the mess. I have two large tanks by a very large window and algae has never been much of a problem. As for the bottom of the tank...I personally go with a sandy bottom, when it gets dirty I siphon the sand out into a bucket, make sure I didnt get any crabs or friendlies, then every so often I replace about .5" of sand with some new live sand.

 

[shibby]

i suppose sunlight would help the algae with photosynthesis thus making it gorw quicker perhaps.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

i suppose sunlight would help the algae with photosynthesis thus making it gorw quicker perhaps.

Yeah but so would the lights over the tank. I'm sure the extra light might speed things along but I'm firmly of the opinion that most algae outbreaks are either due to water chemistry or other issues and not the amount of light on the tank.

Going by experience with my planted tank only I have run this at 4wpg with direct sunlight on it and the only times I have had algae are when I didnt have enough CO2 in there for the plants and when the water circulation got messed up.

In a Marine tank obviously you are are looking to take out everything you are adding to a planted tank but the principle must be the same. If you have an inbalance in the water chemistry (to much phosphate, nitrite, etc) then this is much more likely to cause an algae bloom. Algae as far as I know is not able to live off light alone so if you have an algae bloom it is because it has enough to feed on. (though like I said above when you add high amounts of light to this it is likely to amplify the problem as it then has excess food and excess light to gorw out of control).

Anyway this is just based on my personal experience and is not in anyway scientfic fact so I could be wrong

 

[nilocmal]

All i can tell you is since my tank initially cycled in summer 06, i've tested the water every couple of weeks, and the readings have been consistently as follows:

amonia - 0
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 5 <> 7.5
phosphate - 0
ph - 8.2
sg - 1.025
calcium - 400 <> 425
temp - 25

And since then i've had a constant battle with algae of one sort or another. I turn over 30 x via 3 pumps, plus whatever the skimmer's doing, which is a nice deltec one.

Soooo, getting back to the original question folks, if you had a clean sheet of paper and a reasonably sound budget, what you get ?

 

[SkiFletch]

Well lets see if I can explain what Adrinal means in a way that makes sense. We first have to take a trip back to biology class here... Photosynthesis takes plae in organelles called Chloroplasts in the cells of photosynthetic organisms. Inside the chloroplast light of a VERY specific wavelength strikes the active portion and causes the creation of potential energy (in the form of proton movement) that the cell uses to its advantage. Its the specificity of the chloroplast that's important to understand here and not all chloroplasts are created the same way. For example, some respond to red wavelengths like 560nm and others respond to blue wavelengths like 450nm. If the chloroplast responds to 560nm light, and you illuminate it with only 550nm light, it will wither away and die, unable to create energy.

Photosynthetic cells of higher organisms typically have a few different wavelengths they'll respond to. Land-going plants and very shallow water algae usually have chloroplasts that respond to 3 or 4 wavelengths, including at least one or two in the red/orange/yellow spectrum. However the symbiotic Zooxanthellae algae in corals usually only have chloroplasts that respond to one or two wavelengths usually on the blue end of the spectrum (since blue light is the only one to penetrate through water). Cyanobacteria and hair algae on the other hand are shallow-water organisms and really only respond to red/orange/yellow light and require these to grow.

Now, if you look at the spectral output of most reef aquarium bulbs, especially 12k-20k, bulbs have peaks in the blue range and almoast no output in the red/orange/yellow range. Thus, the lights we use on our tanks don't encourage the growth of algae. As a side note, cheaper bulbs tend to output at least some light that might be usable to nuisance algaes. Sunlight of course is full-spectrum and will provide nuisance algaes with the wavelengths required to grow. Sunlight also however has lots of blue wavelength light good for corals, which is why Adrinal said it's good.

But remember there is a second side of this story. While sunlight may in fact provide the wavelength the nuisance algae requires to grow, nuisance algae cannot grow without nutrient fuel. Hair algae grows best with phosphates and nitrates, while cyanobacteria can also use sulphates and silicates as fuels. So in algae-ridden tanks, the problem is that there are nutrients present AND the appropriate wavelength to cause them to flourish.

The next obvious question is that you measured no phosphates but still had algae... makes no sense right? Well your tank is a biological system that doesn't stop for your convenience to test the water. Essentially the algae consumes the fuel faster than you can test for it, thus your tank appears to have no phosphates/nitrates. The presence or growth rate of the algae however proves that you do in fact have a nutrient problem.

So how do we remove nutrients? Heavy skimming, low feedings, waterchanges, long LR cure times (think months, not weeks), use of a refugium to promote macro algae and out-compete nuisance algae, promotion of coraline algae to out-compete, frequent gravel vaccuuming, use of a cryptic zone to promote beneficial filter feeders, phosphate reactors with granular ferric oxide media, ozone in conjunction with protein skimming to remove more DOCs (used carefully of course). As Adrinal said, consider those first, stop nutrients, and even IF you provide the proper wavelength of light, the nusance algae can't grow with out nutrients.