mogurnda

I know I'm not alone with this problem. My sump cracked, and I got maybe 5 gallons of water on the floor. The carpet pad is wet, but not accessible under the tank. Do I really have to move the whole thing to get pad out and replaced?

Happt Birthday!

If you need more, I have quite a pile after some clumsy tank maintenance. Orange and brown.

Looking great, Jake!

Nice! Well, you can join me on the dark side, now that I have shut down the 20 and the 90 is running.

T5 vs VHO? That will indeed be interesting. I have never used VHO, so I can't say how it compares to my T5s. If you look at the industrial sites where they measure light output, T5 is competitive with MH in terms of lumens per watt. As far as I know, no one has looked at that in an aquarium context. In terms of appearance, nothing beats halides, though.

There are probably lots of yellow terebellid (aka spaghetti) worms in there. They are good things. They usually sit buried or in a crack, and extend the tentacles to bring in food. Here are some of their friends under a mushroom.

Hey Andrew, Welcome over here! Nice to see you.

Sorry to break in, but why not use red LEDS, to disturb the critters a little less? Many of our pets see very well in the blue range, but a lot of the inverts can't see red.

Something I'd be interested in would be the ability of macroalgae to use nitrate vs ammonia as a nitrogen source. In FW plants it varies between species, and I have no idea whether people have looked at nitrogen utilization in the commonly kept macros like gracilaria, caulerpa, ulva or chaetomorpha.

So far, I have pulled out 4 mantis. JimCroce got one, Michael will get another. I definitely want to keep one, but I haven't decided about the other yet. Who know, there may be another mantis in there somewhere. There are hairy crabs, but it will be a while before I start pulling them out.

So should there be frozen peas in the next batch of blender food? Looks like the fish want it.

I guess I was trying to say that was a good reason for questioning my design. I need to get better at using the smilies [beer2]

From a few posts up:

A few inches. It's part of the closed loop. Not related. Yes. Water spewed out the top of the tee and the gurgling didn't go away. Sure it's justifiable. But I tried it the other way and it didn't work. Here's what you might try. Plumb it in the way that makes the most sense to you, but don't glue anything. Then, if a problem arises, you can disassemble and modify very easily. There may be something funky about my plumbing that caused the problem, and you not have to do the large tee thing. Doesn't hurt to try it.

What size pipe are you using for the final turn? It looks like you're using 1" all the way. Until I expanded to 2" at the tee, I got a lot of noise. I disagree with reefhippie about wanting clean water to go into the fuge. Oh, and forget what he said about the input having to be above the surface. He doesn't understand your plumbing. That's the problem I have when I post on RC. About 60% of the replies are just noise, with a few being extremely useful. Wow, doxyman's looks a lot like mine. Except better, with the baffle at the input and the triple baffle after the skimmer. Edit One more thing: I have a siphon break on the return and no check valves in the system. From what I have read, check valves can fail fairly easily, so I made sure that the sump can handle whatever flows back when the pump goes off.

It seems simplest to put it at the turn. Where were you thinking? Keep asking questions. Just remember that I'm still pretty much a sump noob as well.

I started with an elbow, which is what was causing so much gurgling and noise. If you use a T, air can escape out the top. You may have to use a short length of 2" pipe out the top to contain the splash, but it really works (thanks to rufio over at Reef Central).

I hope this drawing helps. The water from the overflow is split between the part with the skimmer and the fuge. The tees are at the ends of the horizontal runs, with a 2" tee on the left, 1.5" at the right. Here's a photo of the sump, with the 1.5" tee going into the fuge: That little clump of chaetomorpha has grown to fill the fuge within about two weeks. The water falling into the return flows right down the wall, making very little noise. It's completely masked by the other sounds from the skimmer and overflow.

That's 90 lbs of live rock. It's sitting on top of another 40 lbs dead reef rock that is hopefully seeded and live now. When the time comes, I'll add another 40 from the 20 gallon. So it will be about 170 lbs total. The noise in the sump was coming from the water rushing in. The AGA megaflow overflow has something like a durso, so it should be fairly quiet, but I was getting a fairly loud gurgle from the water and air hitting the sump. Solved that by having the 1" pipe run into a 2" tee at the final turn. It's now nice and quiet. With the cheap little float valve I used, I think it will have to go through a drilled hole. You might think about a float switch/solenoid valve system, which is easier to mount. Or, if you're having glass cut for you, they will probably drill it for a modest charge. Tony, the bad crabs are brown and blurry; the good ones are brown and blurry. Surprised an experienced reefer like you can't pick up on that.

Thanks! The rock came from TBS. I am pleased with the rock, and there is certainly tons of life on it. I am shooting a bunch of macros of the corals, fanworms, stars and the like that came in with it. After cracking a few rocks open to extract some mantises, it seems quite porous, despite what the detractors say. I have now ordered from Richard twice, and both times he has been very communicative and conscientious, but he can be a little flaky. This time, the second shipment of rock came 5 days after the first, and without me asking. He actually googled me to find my number to let me know it was coming. We're lucky he didn't ship it to the bass player for the band Pathogen, who has the same name. As far as cost, I paid $516 for 90 lbs rock, 45 lbs sand and a cleaning crew (23 astraeas, 2 cukes, 90 -yes, 90- hermits, a peppermint shrimp, serpent star), plus $100 shipping. Great deal? Not sure, but I'm comfortable with it.

I love that tank! The photos show it off well.

There's lots of good stuff. Some decent-sized colonies of tube coral (Cladocora), some very nice colonies of Siderastrea radians, and a good peppering of hidden cup coral (Phyllangia), fanworms galore, plenty of sponges (we'll see who makes it). I'm a little disappointed in the scarcity of porcelain crabs, hidden cukes and macroalgae, but more critters may yet poke their noses out. Once I start running the halides in a few days, I'll take some macro shots. I decided to try ordering a small sea finger from TBS for $10. That sucker is almost a foot long, and expanding its polyps nicely. The "large" ones must be monsters.

Geez, the last of the live rock just went in Monday night. Give it a few minutes to cure tng Thanks for the offer, Steve. Once it's all settled in, I will definitely be in the market for some new frags. It is a very exciting concept to actually have room for new corals! Here's what I guess will be the last photo of the series. The rock is in, the tank is settling, and I can relax a little.

Michael, now that they are all out of the main tank, you can have yours whenever you want it. Maybe I'll just keep the little guy and let you two have the big ones.