dave w

Thank you! I drove through Haymarket twice today taking a son to and from his orientation at JMU. Can I pick up this weekend?

Hello folks, I ordered some Chaeto online and am dismayed that it won't arrive until April 24, while I'm out of town. Kinda par for the course for Ebay, right? Anyway, can I pay anyone local to give me their harvest? I'm in Fairfax Station and can pick up. Thanks, Dave

I hope so too, but I am not averse to paying for it. I don't mind rewarding fellow local reefers for something they were going to put in the trash anyway.

I'm getting some chaeto by mail order, but I am dubious that the 2" sphere I ordered will actually arrive that size. Does anyone have a harvest of Chaeto from their refugium that they'd like to sell me? I'm in Fairfax Station but will gladly drive to your home for pick up. I'll also settle for caulerpa in a pinch. Thanks, Dave

I didn't see how to add comments on the original postings, so I started a thread. I spent some time at Roger Williams studying their fish hatchery lab and I can wholeheartedly recommend this venue to anyone who is interested in going. Roger Williams has been a leader in breeding many new species of marine fish in their aquaculture lab and they have a first rate setup. The guy leading their program is Andy Rhynes and his name should be familiar to many people, he has been a leader in aquaculture and reefkeeping progress over many years. Although I can't go, I'd be happy to help answer questions if anyone is interested.

Welcome to the DC area. We can never have too many reefers.

Hello, sorry to be late to this thread, I just saw it. There is a 20-30 yr old book by April Kuykendol (or maybe Kirkendoll) entitled "How to raise and train your peppermint shrimp". I could be wrong about the spelling of her last name. I'm sure it didn't sell many copies, and if you can't find it on Amazon, I could lend you my copy.

Thank you. Zooplankton have exponential growth rates so it is hard to match food supply to the changing biomass. You either have a population explosion starving for food, or too much food fouls the water. Using live phyto as food would be ideal, but a 175 gallon tank would need a swimming pool amount of phyto. So my approach is a compromise. I'll grow the zooplankton with cheap inert food (yeast, algae powder, tomato puree). When I harvest zooplankters I'll gut load them on a small amount of live phyto before feeding to the tank. Most people use batch cultures for simplicity. A continuous culture is less work but more complicated. To be safe, I'm oversizing the algae scrubber. What do you think?

Is it overkill? Zooplankton tanks get awful dirty. When the researchers at Univ of Ghent grew brine shrimp, there was a foot of foam on top of the water. The water flow has to be slow to keep plankton alive, so I have to go overboard on the other parameters (filter size and light). I wish there was a better option but I can't think of one for now. Can you? Some use skimming on zooplankton tanks but the fine screen on the inlet is subject to clogging. The turf scrubber just seems like a better fit for this type of setup.

Here's a pic of the dry setup. It's off the pedestal that keeps it at the same water level as the zooplankton tank . This is a dry 5 gallon tank within a 30 gallon tank with lights inside the 5 and outside the 30, so 4 rows of lights so the algae screens are lit from both sides. I'm guessing 1,000 to 1,500 LEDs. Water is pumped into the right end and then siphoned back to the copepod tank on the opposite end. This should hold about 15-20 of those full sized knitting screens for algae growth, and will have airstones also. I'm oversizing the number of screens and lumens because the slow flow will probably only be 100 g.p.h. I don't think brine shrimp or copepods will get caught in the algae, but you never know. With about a million pods/artemia in 175 gallons some may inevitably get trapped in filamentous algae but I don't think it will be a large amount. I'll put a glass cover on both tanks so water doesn't drip into the 5 gallon and short out the lights. I can add more lights on the outside ends, but I ran out of lights.

Thanks, I think you're right. With a big 2" siphon, I could probably do BOTH the airlifts and a low speed pump. Kind of a belt and suspenders approach. If I find the flow is too low with just airlifts, the pump will increase it. I'll try higher flow because I'm going to put lights on both sides of the screens, as long as the higher flow doesn't damage zooplankton. I'll post a pic when its ready.

Thanks man. I missed you guys. But when my business direction changed I had to abandon the greenhouse tank and put all my energy elsewhere. That's how life goes.

Something I forgot to mention is that the 175 gallon zooplankton tanks are plastic, so it easy to put a bulkhead fitting in them.

Can anyone offer help on another issue? I'm using a couple 175 gallon zooplankton tanks to grow live food for the corals. I'll feed the zooplankton tanks heavily and harvest heavily. To maintain water quality I need an algae turf scrubber (ATS) and a slow flow skimmer in a 30 gallon tank right beside the 175s. I can set the ATS a couple inches above the zooplankton tank or a couple inches below, depending on where I put the pump. If the pump is in the 175 gallon and pumps up 2" to the 30 gallon ATS, then the 30 gallon overflows back to the 175. But how to do make an overflow without drilling? I can use siphon tubes but they might clog with a loose clump of algae. I could make a couple big 2" siphon tubes for returns that shouldn't clog. But siphon tubes aren't foolproof, air bubbles could build up in them until they no longer siphon. Second alternative, I set the 30 gallon ATS a couple inches below the 175 tank. Water would from from the 175 by gravity and the pump in the ATS would return to the 175. If power goes out, the 30 gallon may overflow a little but not too much. I have a floor drain in the room so it's not like I'll be flooding my living room carpet. Third alternative, place both tanks at the same level and transfer water from the 175 into the 30 via airlifts. No pump needed and no issues if the power goes out. There will be some salt creep in the 30 so some more cleaning may be needed. Water can be returned via siphon. Any advice? Thanks in advance.

It's doable. Nothing in this hobby is completely easy and pain free, but I believe bare bottoms are much better than sand bottoms. In my experience, sand bottoms are fine for a few years until they accumulate enough detritus to raise levels of bad bacteria like vibrio. By that time we've become lazy and defer the dirty work.

Thanks, gastone. This one won't be so impressive, it's not intended to be a show tank. Minimal acros don't cause much excitement. Issac, I love the bare bottom look of your tank!

Hello all, I'm doing a small system in my basement utility room with 3-4 tanks connected to a central sump. I have a 180 and a 150 display tanks, a 170 gallon sump, and a couple of 75s I'll also use as minor display tanks. I'll plumb them all to the same sump because they're all on the same level. I plan on a very few hard corals and mostly a bunch of soft corals because I like to cultivate live food and keep a lot of zooplankton in the tank. I'm also trying for a plankton friendly circulation system, which is why the sump is at the same level as the display tanks (so, with no head pressure, I can turn down the pump speed and still get good tank turnover). I'll keep a few dwarf angelfish in one tank (probably the 75s or the 150) but I'll keep them away from the softies in the 180. I'll get a fair number of small planktivore fish with small larvae and try to dabble in larval fish rearing, but not terribly seriously because I have a business project that should start in 12-18 months and it will take a lot of time away from looking at fish. I also have two totes for zooplankton culture, because live food is an important thing for me. Thanks in advance for everyone's help. I used to have a build thread here for a large tank I built in a greenhouse attached to my house, but I've ignored that for 10 years because it was too hard to keep temperature control and my work didn't allow the time to take care of it. Dave

Coral Hind and Piper27 (and my other WAMAS friends), Sorry it's been so long since I checked in. Around January a couple of friends who are commercial beekeepers convinced me to become one. I wanted to continue with fish breeding at the same time as beekeeping, but found that I am best when I be single minded with one business, not two. And beekeeping took up all my time for the past 6 months, along with my regular job and being a dad. I hope to have time to get back to fish breeding sometime soon, but I really don't know when that will happen. I'm only up to 200 beehives and you need to get at least 500 to be a serious beekeeper. That could be a few years. Also, I was getting tired of re-inventing the wheel so many times. My advice to anyone building a large system is to be prepared to build many things from scratch because the tank size precludes many "off the shelf" solutions. It was exhausting. Winter heating and summer cooling of a greenhouse are still problems that I haven't fully solved yet, and there's not much stability in a system without good water temps. My geothermal cooling isn't hooked up and my solar hot water collector isn't past the framing stage. Just too many other things to do. Thanks to all for your encouragement and I hope to reciprocate with some fish news in the next year or so. But for a while, the tank continues to grow lots of nice algae and nothing else. I hope to get back in the hobby again soon.

Are they Bangaii, or another type?

Great looking build. I especially like the way your red pvc runs around the back wall to the sump. white pvc there would have looked tacky. I also like the way you tiled your basement floor so there won't be spill issues in the long term. Very smart.

That's a great looking stand and tank. Very clean look. No wonder your wife said yes.

I'm sure he had a happy life in your tank, and much longer than it would have been in the wild. And that makes you a great fishkeeper.

We could always do what the Japanese do. Find one rock above sea level and build a concrete mountain around it so we can claim more sea ownership. Why stop there, just hook a buoy to the point closest to the surface, and claim ownership.

Home Depot has the stuff for around $15 per sheet. The sheets are roughly 2' x 4'.

Josh, I agree that the owner of Quantum Reefs is a good guy and it was very nice of him to let you come in after hours. Keep having fun with the hobby.