Setup ?

[Fballvera22]

well i think i might try something wierd. I am going to go out and buy two ten gallon tanks. I am going to build a stand for them to be one on top of the other with a 1 foot gap between them. I will pump water from my 29 gal into my first (top) ten gal. I will get some acrylic sheets and make this my trickle filter. I will then siphon the water out of there into the ten gal tank below. This will be where my protien skimmer, heater, etc... will be. Then a pump will pump the water out of the lower tank and back into the 29 gal. I will also have a tube (1/8-1/4 inch) going from my tank to the lower ten gal with a controlable valve so that i can maintaine a constant water level in case there is a descrepency between the siphon going to my lower ten and the pump that is pumping the water back to the tank.

This is a project in the making. I will keep you up to date on how it is going ( might be a couple days or a week till i start)

 

[nightrydaz04]

Wouldn't your have a lot of heat loss due to the distance the water has to travel not trying to sinical just a thought.

 

[Fballvera22]

Ya, my 80 gal FW stays at about 78 F, except in the winter, that is when i need the heater but only for 2-4 degrees. So the heater is there as a "just in case." But if i had to do alot of heating then yes i would probably want to put it in the tank, i just wanted to keep it out of sight.

If heat loss did become a problem, i could always wrap some foam insulator around the pipe

 

[Fballvera22]

With that setup would 10 lbs live rock be ok

 

[nightrydaz04]

Yeah 10 lbs. should work but in the future your probably going to want more. I find live rock just as interesting as the fish. Plus it gives your fish a great place to hide.

 

[Fballvera22]

ya as i save up money i will get more live rock

 

[BOWDY]

Originally posted by S.Reef
my nitrates never go over go over 15ppm.

Reef, i panic if mine ever gets near 5ppm. generally all my tanks sit between nil and 1 ppm. over feeding of live fish in the predtank will put it near 5 ppm then its water change time.

so where does it normally sit?

cheers

i use 2 kits to check nitrates

 

[wayne]

Fballvera, if you try that setup you will invariably flood your house. No way is what you describe, relying on balanced flow of two pumps and a siphon ever going to work.
To make this setup function you would need to drill both the tens and let it flow downhill.

If you think a once a month water change is going to give you good conditions on a small novice tank, then you are being very hopeful in my opinion. Given the cost of salt mix (cheap), you can meake your life so much easier with a weekly water change. Do this, and you can forget worrying about chemical supplements for the vast majority of tanks.

Beginners.....
Think simple
Think efficient. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. People setup things the way they do because they work. Think about what need sto happen, and what's the easiest way to do that!

Make your life easy!

 

[aresgod]

agreed, i tried to talk him out of the water fall effect for the same reason that a few years ago i tried it and dumped 10 gallons of water on my floor....tanks need to be drilled to be connected

 

[S.Reef]

Theoretically nitrates are harmless under 100ppm. However to keep inverts and fish healthy they should be under 20ppm. In a fish only tank they can be as high as 50ppm without harming the fish. In a reef they should be undetectable.

 

[S.Reef]

Also it depends on fish load and filtration. I said they never go over 15ppm. Usually they are around 5-10 higher when I need to do a water change.

 

[wayne]

OK, theoretically nitrates need to be about 2000 (!) to affect cell function, but clearly you get some adverse effects far before that. It's not ususual to see FO tanks with very high nitrates into the 100,200 range, but I wouldn't recommend this as you can get specacular algae growths.
Most reefs are held at 0, but this may or may not be optimal. It does stop you getting algal overgrowth of corals. However many corals need some nutrient to feed from. German hobbyists routinely inject ammonia and nitrate to get beter growth, and clam farmers drip ammonia into their systems

 

[BOWDY]

kinda goes against every thing i have been taught.

 

[KahluaZzZ]

My tank is 55 gallons.
I have seaclone 100 wich incredibly removes a lot of stuff, combined with 72 pounds of rock for filtration, 30 pounds crudes coral + 2 ac 401 powerheads. I have aquaclear 500 but they're now used for water movement. My tank is fairly new..almost 3 month and ammonia, nitrites, nitrates = 0.

The rocks are doing almost all the job. I you want to be cheap and wait a little bit more, you can do what i did, and mix base rock with it. Put them in the bottom as LR holder.

I bought damsels when the tank wasn't cycled...they didn't like the ammonia spike but they were fine after that.

 

[wayne]

What does? Introducing ammonia deliberately? A lot of SPS reefs are so sterile the polyps zooanthellae pretty much need 'target feeding' with ammonia. Ditto clams can consume tons of ammonia thus the dripping of ammonia