6 months after going BB and making process chnages

[ldrhawke]

I rebuilt my 2 year old tank about 6 months ago because I was having a hair algae control problem. I was also having difficulty keeping nutrients low enough to have any real success with SPS.


There are several major changes in equipment and approach that I made that I am very pleased with. The photos speak for themselves about if it improved my reef keeping system.

I am not giving any single modification or change credit for the improvments and new ease in keeping my system.

1. Changed out my DSB and went BB. Installed a 1/2' thick black acrylic bottom. (see wrasse photo)
2. Modified and greatly improved my skimmer performance.
3. Added a bag filter system that all my tank over flow goes through. I change out a hand full of polyester floss I put into the bags every couple of days as it becomes full of detrius.
4. I dose 2ml of vodka into the bags daily
5. Every 4 hours for 20 minutes a large capacity recirculation pump turns on and mixes all the waste off of the bottom so it overflows into the filter bags. For about a minute while the pump is running automatically an air stone is turned on which puts fine bubbles into the pump inlet.

This makes for a brief period of white foam froth through out the tank, like a heavy wave action would do. The bubbles attach themselves to the stirred up waste and float it to the top to be overflowed. Also, I was pleasently surprised to see what the bubbles did to the SPS, alot of the SPS slime is removed by the bubbles and floats over the top. ( I have a heavy fish load...15 fish in a 50 gal tank)

Air Bubble Filtration



A few controversial things.

I am sure I will get both positive and negative comments. It has been in place for 6 moths and the tank and coral growth has never been better. Some of my SPS have nearly doubled in size in three months, and the color is great. I had a new blue Acro tort arrive dark brown last week and it turned blue in a week. I no longer have algae problems, the live rock is now covered with coraline, and the tank bottom is always clean. I simply make 20% water changes every two weeks, and unless I see a sign of stress, I no longer do any water analysis testing.

I'm pleased with the tank postive response and progress. I am sure it will look even better in a few years.
BB results

 

[reedman]

First I want to say that is a great setup! I love the access to the RO/DI unit and the thought put into the equipment area below the tank. Very cool!

I also wanted to say good for you trying something new (at least new to me). Someone has to try things for us to advance as a hobby. On principal the air bubble filtration turns your tank into a skimmer chamber for a short period of time. If it doesn't bother the corals it seems solid to me. It's doing what we all strive to do...push the detritus up and into the overflows. very nicely done.

 

[mojoreef]

Looking great Idrhawke and welcome to the world of BB, glad to have ya. The stirring of the detritus on the bottom is a great idea, I keep mine on constant. You are correct on the use of it as a food source. Detritus in general is the major form of food source for corals in the wild and will greatly enhance the nutritional requirements your corals may have. I have never really understood why more folks dont utilize it more as it is so abundant in our tanks and virtually all corals use it.
On the air injection this concept is also a sound idea, But I think I would scale it back a bit (as in not everyday) The slime you are seeing coming from the acro's is one of its major forms of feeding. It spits out the slime which is then bombarded by bacteria and plankton trying to reduce and feed on it. The coral then sucks the slime back in through its cilca and digests the critters in it. I would be concerned that if the air injection is breaking down and removing the slime every four hours you might be taking away to much of a food source. Long term this could have a tough hit on the corals energy budjet. Still a good plan but I would regulate it a bit more.

tank is looking great by the way!!

Mike

 

[plack]

Love the whole tank timed skimmer. Questiion does it cause the sump skimmer to go absolutely bonkers and get all wet and pull out lots of waterm ?
I would not try vodka as I don't want all kinds of different bacteria, some are bound to be bad and that would seem to vary according to alot of varibles and could work against you at any time.

 

[ldrhawke]

Love the whole tank timed skimmer. Questiion does it cause the sump skimmer to go absolutely bonkers and get all wet and pull out lots of waterm ?
I would not try vodka as I don't want all kinds of different bacteria, some are bound to be bad and that would seem to vary according to alot of varibles and could work against you at any time.

Thanks......I see no rapid changes in normal skimmer out put from the aeration and heavy recirculation. What I do see is a filter bag that get loaded up with detrius daily.

On bacteria I'm from a different school. You can't have life without it and a lot of good bacteria limits the amount of bad bacteria. Good and Bad bacteria are always present in a tank just waiting for the opportunity to grow. Just look at your skin under a microscope.

When I dose a small amount of vodka into my dirty filter bags, the bacteria multiply in hours and get so dense and slimy that the floss is like a handful of snot in a few hours...... Any nitrogen or phosphate waste going over the over flow is efficiently collected and becomes their dinner. What they don't eat I throw out in a couple of days.

An interesting discovery I have made during the last month. The growth of the softies in my tank while changing out filter bags daily virtually stopped. By going two to three days between changing out the dirty floss I was able to make the softies bloom again. I am guessing it maybe because it is allowing the waste to build in the bags longer so that more bacteria or nitrates were able to leak back into the tank to feed the softies.

I am assuming the nutrient level started to rise and fed the softies . It doesn't appears that the nutrient increase was enough to bother the SPS. This method of control could be one answer to allowing a way for both SPS and softies to exist together...at least from the difference in nutrients they seem to require. It is an easy way to control wide nutrient swings that can caused by waste pockets in a tank.

The carbon I keep in the same bags hopefulluy addresses the chemical issues.

Thanks again for the positive comments.....

 

[wrightme43]

I like it. I think if its working and everything is happy, and you are happy. It is a complete sucess. I looked thru all your pictures, very nice. I liked the skimmer test video too. And on a side note, cool looking cat too. Maine Coon? Steve

 

[ldrhawke]

Looking great Idrhawke and welcome to the world of BB, glad to have ya. The stirring of the detritus on the bottom is a great idea, I keep mine on constant. You are correct on the use of it as a food source. Detritus in general is the major form of food source for corals in the wild and will greatly enhance the nutritional requirements your corals may have. I have never really understood why more folks dont utilize it more as it is so abundant in our tanks and virtually all corals use it.
On the air injection this concept is also a sound idea, But I think I would scale it back a bit (as in not everyday) The slime you are seeing coming from the acro's is one of its major forms of feeding. It spits out the slime which is then bombarded by bacteria and plankton trying to reduce and feed on it. The coral then sucks the slime back in through its cilca and digests the critters in it. I would be concerned that if the air injection is breaking down and removing the slime every four hours you might be taking away to much of a food source. Long term this could have a tough hit on the corals energy budjet. Still a good plan but I would regulate it a bit more.

tank is looking great by the way!!

Mike

Thanks Mike....coming from you that's a nice compliment. The logic of removing as much waste as quckly as possible just became to obvious. Why put up with waste and try to process it when it can be removed? I just didn't have any luck with SPS while I had a DSB with our without CPW.

The real key, is as you've always said......skim skim skim. Buy the biggest baddest skimmer you can afford.

Keeping everything in balance is very easy and no hassle now with my new set up. A few minutes a day and 15 minutes on the weekend cleaning out the skimmer and 30 minutes everyother week doing a water change. I never need to syphon the tank to clean out waste or fight hair algae.

At this point I see no need to cut back on the air and heavy recirculation. I did get a lot of slime as the SPS initially adapted to the heavy flow swing and air. Now they just give off small amounts of slime after every cycle.

The bubbles pick up a lot of waste off the bottom and add air bubble to it so that it floats over the top with every cycle. As I said the SPS seem to love the regular feeding. You can watch the SPS close down with every cycle and then open back up as the water clears up. The bacteria proliferation from feeding Vodka doesn't hurt either. In three months most of my SPS have double in size.

 

[ldrhawke]

I like it. I think if its working and everything is happy, and you are happy. It is a complete sucess. I looked thru all your pictures, very nice. I liked the skimmer test video too. And on a side note, cool looking cat too. Maine Coon? Steve

Thanks Steve....I'm having fun with this reef stuff finally. It can be frustrating getting a handle on it.

My cool looking Maine Coon would love to get close to your parrot :evil:.

I used to have a big GreenWing Maca and a Quaker parrot. I had a video of my std. poodle, the main coon, the greenwing, and the quaker all playing with each other on the floor. It was a riot. Everytime the cat thought he had the better of the greenwing, the quaker would swoop down and bite the cats tail :lol:

 

[wrightme43]

LOL, My Lory has got a hold of my cat once, he has decided outside birds are for eating, and inside birds are for leaving alone. LOL I would love to see your cat/dog/parrot wrestling video. I bet it is fun. Thanks for posting and sharing your ideas. Steve

Thanks Steve....I'm having fun with this reef stuff finally. It can be frustrating getting a handle on it.

My cool looking Maine Coon would love to get close to your parrot :evil:.

I used to have a big GreenWing Maca and a Quaker parrot. I had a video of my std. poodle, the main coon, the greenwing, and the quaker all playing with each other on the floor. It was a riot. Everytime the cat thought he had the better of the greenwing, the quaker would swoop down and bite the cats tail :lol:

 

[mojoreef]

The logic of removing as much waste as quckly as possible just became to obvious. Why put up with waste and try to process it when it can be removed?

Hmmm where have I heard of that before??LOL

I did get a lot of slime as the SPS initially adapted to the heavy flow swing and air. Now they just give off small amounts of slime after every cycle.

I here ya my friend, I just wanted to make sure you look at that slime in more then one way. Is I would imagine that part of it is due to irratation, but it is also a form of feeding. Something to watch thats all.

In three months most of my SPS have double in size.

Make sure you keep an eye on what actually is good growth. Not just that the fact that the coral is laying down skeliton at a fast rate (that isnt growth). I am all with you Idrhawke, watch people being innovative is a great thing! Just trying to add some thought to things to watch for.

Now we want lots of pics and documentation!! lol

good luck


Mike

 

[ldrhawke]

I here ya my friend, I just wanted to make sure you look at that slime in more then one way. Is I would imagine that part of it is due to irratation, but it is also a form of feeding. Something to watch thats all.

...........Mike

My thinking for going with heavy flow for short periods and then greatly reduced flow rates for hours, was that it was more like what happens on an actual reef. Flow on a lot of reefs changes directions, intensity, and velocity several times a day and has very low flow for long periods.

I felt my approach may do less damage to the coral. It gives it periods for rest and digestion, that you don't always get in a reef tank with continous high flow rates. Continous high flow may do just what you are concerned about by wiping the slime off any coral to close to the point of discharge or from too much flow.

 

[Krish]

Hey man, the tank looks great and I love your idea and reasoning behind it. Keep up the good work and good ideas.

 

[Skimmy]

yes, kudos to your system, very nice. your rock work is awesome too, you cant even see the zipties in the final product.
boy, and i thought i liked to butcher skimmers and modify them, that's quite the monster you've created. you must have increased your pump size from the stock model scince you doubled your skimmer height, yes? it just plain looks cool

 

[wave98]

LDRHawke:

Not too long ago you were very happy with the results you were getting with a
CWP.
Your associated logic there appeared to be very sound. Could you tell us a little bit about the volume and timing schedule that you ended up with and the results you were eventually getting that caused you to look for a better solution.
I have carefully read the entire lengthy thread with "mojoreef" and many others investigating the potential of CWP here on RF, but it seemed to get unreasonably boggled down in the mechanical design and detritus removal area, and then just died without any conclusion as to appropriate substrate composition ( size, depth, layering and so on ) .
I am looking for nitrate and phosphate reduction primarily and I don't have any difficulty with detritus or "sand blowing". I have 1-2 mm aragonite at the surface with oolitic underneath and some coarser at the bottom 3/4" layer just to keep the oolitic out of the plenum ( 6" total depth ).
I run 450 gal. per hour through 20 gal. of actual water in a 27 gal. hex. tank and another 16 gal. in the "sump-refugium". There is about 35 lbs. of live rock in the hex along with 2 brittle stars, about 50 snails and crabs, (5) 1 1/2" fish, lps, sps, xenia, zoas star polyps, you name it.
This is a 7 mo. old system and all the animals are quite happy, except that the sps are "only maintaining"( need more than 96 w pc's ) and the xenia are a little bit moody. I am still losing the battle on nitrate however, even though there is no noticable algae in the tank other than the slight haze on the glass where the snails don't get 100% when they pass by.
I built and installed a CPW based closely on your design from another older forum link, but I have not begun wasting yet. As it sits, it is just a plenum. It is time for me to start wasting the plenum and I expect it to take some time to deliver results. I have not plumbed the "drain", pump or timing yet, and any input you could offer here regarding those would be very highly appreciated.
I understand that you have moved on to another system, but the gobies, jawfish and various other substrate dwellers and their interactions are too enticing for me to backaway from, and I don't think the amount of actual use and experimentation reported on thus far justify the early death of this system's potential.
You are the only person I know of who has actually run the system in the specfic fashion that you specified( high flow, short duration, low volume, everyday ), and your input is therefore quite invaluable to me.
Thank you for your time: Wave98

 

[olaggie01]

Any updated information on this? How is the SPS growth?

Chris

 

[KRYPTICOL]

Well, I think this idea sounds great LDRHawke. I also enjoyed the CPW. I'd like to hear an update as most new ideas need to be tested for long periods of time to find any possible negative impacts. Any dramatic changes/fresh pics for us???
I'm setting up a 25 tall with CPW, my own personal test on a mini-frag tank. I'm thinking of trying this BB intank skimmer blast in my next SPS display. What do you think about using this with the ZeoVit System??? Seems like they may fit well together, Maybe???
LDRHAwke...just wanted to say thanks for being intelligent enough, and willing to use your tank and wallet to push the envelope and share with us....And to everyone else that fits that description also, of course!!!

 

[ldrhawke]

Sorry for not responding sooner....I was not set up on my User CP to get response notifications. I changed that.

CPW questions.... I also think the theory is still sound. I simply started having difficulty in controlling N&P after about 6 months. It could have been my own fault and caused by over feeding. When I broke down the CPW bed it was like black cement in areas, which isn't good. I don't question it can be made to work. I could probably make it work better now that I have more reef keeping experience........but, then I started asking myself why? No matter what I did, if I made a mistake in operating a DSB, be it conventional or CPW, it could go bad and then it would be slow and difficult to correct. Bomber's bare bottom arguments began to make sense for my system. If I wanted have a low nutrient tank...it is physically easier to remove as much of the waste that you can as quickly as possible and not try to process it in a DSB. It is easier to compensate for the low nutrients being too low by feeding fresh nutrients more often.

My present approach....BareBottom; Vodka dosing into floss coupled with removing the floss soon after dosing; and heavy water movement coupled with short bursts of fine air bubbles works in removing waste in the tank. It puts me in control and I'm not dependent upon the often very slow response of getting an unbalanced tank back in balance. It has allowed me to quickly respond to any indication of excess nitrates or phosphates; and/or more easily keep them under control.

With my present setup, the tank water is crystal clear and hardly ever needs the glass cleaned. The SPS are growing, the fish are fat and healthy ( my clowns breed every 3 weeks), and macro algae is under control with very little ever even present. If I see any algae starting, my tank is telling me my N&P are creeping up, I simply double my vodka dose for a week to bring it back under control. Maintenance is less than 10 minutes a day and I've gone as long as a week with out any. It works for me. But I continue to look for ways to improve.

Everyone's tank is different enough that there is no single right answer. An SPS tank with only a few fish and a DSB works great for a lot of reef keepers. I have a tendency to push the biological balance envelope with too many fish for the size of my system, which forces me to look for other answers.

 

[mojoreef]

Having control is such a nice thing isnt it. Thats the big one for me, I am just not smart enough to compete with mother nature, so I just try to bypass her as much as I can,lol


Mike

 

[DocG]

ldrhawke,

I have to admit that I am very fascinated by the bubble filtration concept. On my current tank it seems like a very easy thing to do (add tubing into CL inlet, air pump and timer). I just shot some air from my turkey baster into the inlet and was impressed with the bubbles I got.

The idea seems pretty sound to me. The only thing is I would like to do a little more reading about it. Is this a concept that you came up with yourself? Or were you inspired by another source?

Is there a thread or article that you can direct me to that will tell me more. I tried searching and didn't find anything.

Don

 

[ldrhawke]

ldrhawke,

I have to admit that I am very fascinated by the bubble filtration concept. On my current tank it seems like a very easy thing to do (add tubing into CL inlet, air pump and timer). I just shot some air from my turkey baster into the inlet and was impressed with the bubbles I got.

The idea seems pretty sound to me. The only thing is I would like to do a little more reading about it. Is this a concept that you came up with yourself? Or were you inspired by another source?

Is there a thread or article that you can direct me to that will tell me more. I tried searching and didn't find anything.

Don

There nothing you will find to read for research. It is my idea. It was simply based on close observation during water changes. The excess air bubbles improved waste particle removal and excess slime removal from some SPS by attaching bubbles so it is floated up and over the over flow. It is similar to the effect you would get from dissolved air flotation in treating primary waste in a waste water treatment plant.

There is no risk that I can ascertain. In fact, when you use it with stonger flow rates, to help remove settleout waste from the bottom, it not only helps to re-suspend settled waste, but it make bacterial food available for SPS and other coral from the bacterial mulm settled out.

I have been using it for awhile now and have observed no negatives and only positives. I have varied timing from 3 times a day to 12 times a day. I am back to 3 times a day now, because I felt it might have been doing too good a job of removing nutrients if used more often.

On second thought, fine bubble filtration does have a negative. For it to work, you need to change out the media that collects the waste more frequently. If you don't, the filter starts to dump nitrates back into the system. I change out and toss the filter floss every couple of days, even if I am not adding vodka. At least have an over sized skimmer that can grap a lot of the waste put back into suspension.

What I call bubble filtration really isn't much different that what happens naturally on some reefs during tidal changes and having waves break on the reef.