Sump flow and turnover rating. How is it done?

[mojoreef]

Ok let me show you what I am refering to Seth I am going to use your statement, even though I know I am taking it out of context a bit.

He ordered pure dry rock and thought he would ave to wait about a year for his tank to be ready after curing cycling etc.

He would have to wait for about 10 millions years for things to evolve and create an enviroment, or even a place where the bacteria would populate.

I told him I boiled bleached and sun dried ALL my rock...threw it in the tank

Ok but why?? how long in the sun to off gas? would it even off gas without residue?

Waited about 6-8 weeks and started stocking

No way this could happen unless you did a number of different things. Sets the newbie up for disaster.

Then he asked me how often I tested my water....to which I laughed. I don't test unless everything starts to go wrong.

Another disaster waiting to happen.


So I could sit here and see why that whole post was filled with terrible advice and would have to post to it, so the newbie would understand why. But in the same breathe I dont test unless I see something, I cook my rocks the same way and so on.

Not sure if that came across the right way, but their it is


Mike

 

[Krish]

No I stand by it. Honestly give them just left and right nudges and let them go. They will learn MORE by experiencing basic failures (not catastrophic) than by not making their own mistakes.

Now the way Krish phrased it may be a little extreme.

Haha! Mine was posted as only a joke and your was serious.

Going on your last post though, my personal opinion differs a lot. We are too far into this hobby to just give people a little nudge and let them experience some failures to learn. The whole purpose of advancing in the hobby and doing all these new tests and so forth is to eliminate the potential problems as much as we can. It would no doubt be good to know how to handle a problem if one came up and first hand experience is usually the best teacher, but I don't need to take drugs to know what it can do to a person. I can learn from others mistakes by just looking out the window. Same as here. A person wanting to learn about the hobby will dig in and along the way will come across many threads where people experienced failures and how they over came them which they can learn from without having to experience them. Telling a person you boiled your rocks, sun baked them and tossed them in the tank and started stocking a few weeks after will cause them to send out a hit man for you lol! If everything in the rock was killed during the boiling and drying out process then something else had to be introduced into the tank as well in order for sponges and feather dusters and coralline and all those other nice things to grow as they just don't show up on their own in water. My thoughts are equip the people with everything they need. Give them all options and possible outcomes and then let them take it from there fully equipped with all the knowledge they should need to have a successful reef. Just giving them a little something and allowing them to experience a bit of failure is a tough pill to swallow. Not sure if you are a parent but I have two kids. One 17 months old and the other almost 5 and I can tell you this...I will teach them everything I can about life and point them in the right direction as best I can because I don't want to see them fail and learn the hard way and in this hobby I think we should do the same for a fellow reefer.

Just my opinion though. Not one of those that choose the tough love route.


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[akunochi]

Yep I have an 8 year old boy. I would rather provide GUIDANCE than a flat out here is a step by step guide to starting your reef, because there are 8 gazillion ways to do it.

We have come this far in the hobby through not only scientific research but also experimentation at the hobbyist level. If everyone had followed exact guidance every time and didn't experiment or be given their free space to try it then we would all be growing button polyps with a under gravel filter and t12 lighting....still.

I did kill my rock work completely and I always do. Where does bacteria come from lots of sources and that is all that is needed for the cycle to complete. Where did the sponges and all the other goodies ride in at? Probably off small pieces of rock from frags such as well as cheato from others tanks.

Am I saying to hand them a tank, water, and a coral and say good luck chap. No. Am I saying that laying out a basic plan of what works and what doesn;t is better than saying "HOW TO BEGIN A REEF"

Step 1 Get tank
Step 2 get rock
Step 3 put rock in tank
etc etc

Yes



BUT you should really stay on topic Krish GEEZ! LOL

I like slower flow with and overrated return pump feeding a manifold so that the actual equation works out like (Water entering sump - [Return pump rating - manifold flow+return to sump]- head loss =~ 5 times volume of the sump per hour for contact time with the skimmer.

 

[mojoreef]

Ok my bad I guess I totaly derailed this thread from its original purpose, I think its an interesting topic though so I will start another thread and move some of this over. But I dont want to kill this any more then I already have.

Mike

 

[TJL]

I have been enjoying this thread reading all different successful methods used and reasons why each has chosen their particular route. It really goes to show you just how variable this subject is. For me a high to very high flow fuge/ sump is my preference and utilizing it as part of my DT 's water movement. Total system turnover near 10x or Fuge turnover near 30x, using a mixed bed of macro algae over Mud or DSB. My fuge is teaming with pods, mysid shrimp, snails, starfish, sponges, tunicates etc... My reeftank is definitely a high bio-load system (which visitors can attest to) and this set-up does and has worked for me for many years. Don’t normally have problems with nuisance algae unless I slack in my maintenance duties. IMHO feel there is less issues with a high flow system than low flow because of not having any dead spots even in sump and that my detritus is removed by a number of filtering organisms throughout system. Sterile SPS reeftanks are not my thing but can easily see the benefit from having everything settle out in sump for removal, and even more so from a bare bottom system. So that's my .02 worth to help balance out Krish's 1.50 lol

Cheers, Todd

 

[Krish]

I have been enjoying this thread reading all different successful methods used and reasons why each has chosen their particular route. It really goes to show you just how variable this subject is. For me a high to very high flow fuge/ sump is my preference and utilizing it as part of my DT 's water movement. Total system turnover near 10x or Fuge turnover near 30x, using a mixed bed of macro algae over Mud or DSB. My fuge is teaming with pods, mysid shrimp, snails, starfish, sponges, tunicates etc... My reeftank is definitely a high bio-load system (which visitors can attest to) and this set-up does and has worked for me for many years. Don’t normally have problems with nuisance algae unless I slack in my maintenance duties. IMHO feel there is less issues with a high flow system than low flow because of not having any dead spots even in sump and that my detritus is removed by a number of filtering organisms throughout system. Sterile SPS reeftanks are not my thing but can easily see the benefit from having everything settle out in sump for removal, and even more so from a bare bottom system. So that's my .02 worth to help balance out Krish's 1.50 lol

Cheers, Todd

I think Krish talk's too much :lol:


I'm kinda more on your side Todd with the higher flow sumps, just because I like a lot of flow. Kinda weird. Had both high and slow flow sumps and never saw a difference in either so just for the simple fact I love flow, I lean more towards "high". Kinda helps keep the detritus from settling in the sump as well. Keep it all in the water column and less for me to siphon.

 

[Frankie]

Ok my bad I guess I totaly derailed this thread from its original purpose, I think its an interesting topic though so I will start another thread and move some of this over. But I dont want to kill this any more then I already have.

Mike

Holy Mary mother of God, what went wrong here! LOL

Seriously, this thread is going in just the intended direction. It's such a wide topic it really is hard to derail it.

Sump flow applies to "cured" or "uncured" rock, being a (kirsh is going to kill me) "closed system", all of it really plays a factor when starting up a new system.

Just how deep down the rabbit hole do we want to go is the question. This is an "advanced topic" so new people starting up, please excuse our ignorance of you

I'll float along a bit more since not much has been addressed to my question yet. LOL!

 

[akunochi]

Ummm what was the question?