A new way to cycle a tank?

[tcduongxx]

Report,

It is now nine plus months and I am start to see some brown aglae. It might due to my fault of not keeping the water flow at the recommended rate. My current stock is 10 fishes ranging from one to three inches. 4 anamones 10 inch each feed with large shrips twice a week.

10 soft and LPS corals and just added 10 more sps frags. The new frag and all the coral have significant grow. Polops extention of all coral day and night.

The sump is dirty with lot of dirt. Need to be clean soon. Lots of pod and baby shimps in the sump.

Corrected the low rate through the carbon filter and water parameters should return to normal in a few days. (I back flush the carbon filter and knock lots of dirty stuff out of the carbon filter and flow rate is back to normal. *During back flush of the carbon filter, Methane gas came out of the filter and it smell really bad.)...

Problem with this filter system is too much dirt and dust particles produce from the bacteria in the carbon filter and need to figure out how to keep the dirt out of the display tank. Gravel vac once a month is not enough. Have one large wrasse and it keep digging into the gravel and kick the dirt back up into the water col all the time. The wrasse have to go or I have to do more gravel vac.

Saw a system where they vac the gravel and all the particles are trap by the filter and the water return to the tank. Look into dyi that soon.

The calcite in the Hyatt system is not desolving fast enought so Kalk is use to suplement once a week. Maybe the Hyatt system is too small for coral load.

The system is still going strong.... I know the carbon is no longer active and it is just a bio bed now. The reason I know that is because my pt skimmer extract fluid smell bad just like other setup without carbon.

Found a reefer also experimenting with Hyatt system and we are currently comparing notes.

Report back in three months.

 

[tcduongxx]

More info....

Redesign carbon tube from a tube to a tube with internal return pipe like that of the Red torpeto sold by Hiatt... Made it out of PVC. Empty out the content from the old tube and clean the carbon and load the carbon into the new tube fill 2/3 full. Re-connected the tube to the system and added more RN bacteria.. The tube perform 10 time better than before.

The flow is more than 10x the recommended rate. The RN bacteria grow really fast and cloud the water and coated the rock glass and sand. Red Slime bacteria in the tank all dead. It even cover and attached to algae.

Since the red slime bacteria are dead. I cut back the flow and the tank is crystal clear. The skimmer took out lot of the RN.

Since the flow is now at recommended rate.. I stop supplement the Kalk to see if the calcite is being desolve by the bacteria to stablize the alk/cal/mag....

Coral Grow is great... Some SPS grow 1/4 of an inch in two weeks. Polops fully extened from all hard and soft coral. It seem like the coral is feeding on the RN in the tank.

RN and Tribase Carbon does keep the water clean is my conclusion.

I am still not sure about the calcite (PH rock) does as advertise. I report to see where my alk/cal/mg/ph normalize to in a few weeks. I would be very surprise if the water parameter normalize close to natural ocean parameter.

Report back in a few weeks.