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Anemone

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    Fish room help

    in General Discussion

    Tagging along as I'm putting one of these together as well.

    One thought is to have a sump under the tank, and plumb that via overflow to the remote basement sump. Advantages being that the flow rate between the upstairs sump and basement sump just needs to be high enough to maintain consistent water parameters, so you can save the cost and fine tuning of getting a 300 Watt return to flow just right. The under tank sump functions as a settling tank and place for a mechanical filter. Return water from the basement has whatever additional treatments you want. This only works if you are of a school of thought that allows for slower flow through the remote sump and refugium. You've got to think and design carefully through more possible failure scenarios (any combination of clogged overflows or failing pumps) but this can be worked out.

    Keeping the sump on a shelf in the basement will also save pumping costs since you will have less head to overcome.

    If you are lucky enough for the geometry this to work, consider putting in a fat (at least 3 inches) PVC pipe to encase all your aquarium plumbing. That way if something leaks it is contained and drips out at the end (in the basement). Or if you want to add or replace anything, just pull it through. This also lets you ensure there is a downward slope along any horizontal runs. Hard to fit this into a wall, easier straight down. In my case there was room under the main staircase which shares a wall with the tank, so I lucked out.

    And finally, definitely look into the structural support as others said. Safety first.

    Dave W's 3000 gal plankton/reef tank

    in Dedicated Tank (Build) Forum

    Neat idea. Maybe a pilot test would be a good start. You could try different cycles, hopefully you'll find the right balance somewhere between China and pots and pans.

    I think those filter screens are also to protect the pump, and stop the little arm holes that jet out the water from getting clogged. You might have to leave the screens in place.

    Kids' favorites

    in General Discussion

    I'm looking for stocking suggestions to appeal to my kids. They're pretty much over most fish. On the other hand there was a big blennie they saw recently that was hilarious because they thought it was too fat to swim. So I'm trying to come up with a few unusual things to stock, e.g. pipefish, sea cucumbers, nudibranches, or particularly odd fish.

    Any suggestions or experiences?

    Panda's 180g Tank and Stand Build.

    in Dedicated Tank (Build) Forum

    Sorry, build my led. I've heard very good things about their stuff. Reasonably priced as lighting goes which means we are well passed raised eyebrows, buy not quite to automatic divorce. I'm planning on staggering the purchases, one for the FOWLR stage and a second when it's time for demanding corals. We'll see how that goes. Anyway hopefully not too much of a detour from your thread; I think my issues are at least a little bit relevant to your situation.

    Hair algae?

    in General Discussion

    This makes me think of the movie Alien, where the blood from the face hugger ate through almost the whole ship. "Molecular Acid" they said.

    As hard as this is for me to imagine, it's better safe than sorry, eh? A scientist that I very much respect was wont to say: "Failure to imagine does not constitute proof."

    Hair algae?

    in General Discussion

    Don't use the sump if you're going to be treating with copper or other meds. You can't get it all out and it will contaminate the rest of the tank when you turn it back on. Get a cheap dedicated tank for meds if you end up doing it.

    Would you worry even if the sump was bare bottom? Or at least the substrate was cleared out after?

    Hair algae?

    in General Discussion

    Soooo I added the correct amount of rock now, 75 pounds of rock.

     

    I have a black damsel in my tank and he has white spots. Is it too late to get rid of him before an ich outbreak?

     

    Sent from my SM-N920P using Tapatalk

    I'd recommend returning all fish if you can. Without fish, the ich eggs will hatch and the larvae should starve and die (I think they are called tomonts and tomites but you get the idea). After a few weeks without fish the tank should be ich free.

     

    If you keep the fish, the bad news is that the effective treatments would kill off your invertebrates if you try to do it in the display tank. Not just snails and crabs, but also the smaller ones that came with your live rock. This could be a disaster as now you are dealing with ammonia from dead and rotting inverts in addition to the ich.

     

    As others said, the practical solution is to use a hospital tank. Or possibly your sump if you've got one. You'd have to turn off the return pump of course. Keeping fish alive in a hospital tank is a ton of work since you won't have effective biofiltration established. The combination of ich infection, nitrite and ammonia exposure, and the toxicity of the treatment (copper, formalin, or lower salinity) can be tough to survive which is why returning the fish should be preferred.

     

    Best of luck to you and your fish. Please let us know what happens.

    47 year old tank

    in General Discussion

    Last night I collected some scurvy seaweeds, algae and muck from the side of a wooden dock on the south side of Long Island.  It is now suspended in a net in my tank as I just want the bacteria and amphipods but not the slimy looking algae.  This is another one of my methods that purists will say is going to crash my tank due to parasites,  anthrax, Godzilla fry, invasive algae, etc.  My tank depends on these infusions as I think bacteria is necessary and I also feel that it gets stagnant if you just have bacteria from a LFS.  Of course this is also just something that bounces around in my head and may be completely wrong.

     

     

    I know many people are looking in horror thinking about bacteria, parasites, red tide, mononucleosis and global warming but there is a name for those people, that name is Sissies. Our fish came from the sea and the sea is not sterile. An operating room is sterile and how many times have you seen a reef tank in an operating room?

     

    Hi Paul,

     

    I'm relatively new here and trying to read through old posts as I get ready to set up a 6' tank after my home renovation is done (ETA about a month on the renovation).  Enough about me though.

     

    The couple of posts quoted from above struck a chord, and not just because of the colorful imagery.  I think everyone agrees that bacteria in the aquarium are helpful for denitrification/nitrification, but in nature they have many other beneficial roles as well that scientists are still figuring out.  One fascinating role of bacteria is to help feed and replenish a defensive layer of bacteriophages that live in mucus (e.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23690590).  Mucus contains glycoproteins that are adapted to hold onto bacteriophages, but since mucus is always being shed (ewww) we need regular contact with (nonpathogenic) bacteria to keep up the phage population, since phages can only reproduce by infecting target bacteria.  Then when pathogenic bacteria show up, the phages can kill them.  Since any given phage can only infect specific bacterial species, more bacterial diversity leads to more phage diversity, giving a stronger defense.  This was something that wasn't at all appreciated back when I was in school, but the evidence seems pretty compelling now (http://www.nature.com/news/viruses-in-the-gut-protect-from-infection-1.13023; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marion_Leclerc/publication/261738260_Bacteriophages_An_underestimated_role_in_human_and_animal_health/links/0a85e533d49b04b483000000.pdf).  Maybe important for fish immunity too?  But I digress.

     

    Skimming turns out to have pretty severe impact on bacterial counts and probably diversity too.  A recent article looked at bacterial counts in reef tank water and saw that skimmed tanks have about 10x lower bacteria counts (source: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2011/3/aafeature).  Non-skimmed tanks had bacterial counts similar to samples from natural reefs.  There was reason to believe that skimming also cuts down the bacterial diversity.    From the article:

     

    Aquaria subjected to active filtration via skimming present water column bacteria populations that are approximately 1/10 of those observed on natural reefs. The consequences of this disparity on the long-term health of the tank's livestock are not known. . . . It appears likely that some types of bacteria are indeed "skimmable", but others are not. Thus, skimming inadvertently provides severe (?) evolutionary pressure to skew the tank's resident water column bacteria population to favor the "non-skimmable" cohort.

     

    If this is true, should we try to get away from skimming?  Maybe our skimmers should be normally off but available for emergency use, like a bad bacterial bloom?  One fantastic example of tanks running well without skimming is this one from James Fatherree: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2014/9/aquarium (who was going to be the speaker at the winter WAMAS meeting before it was postponed by the snow).

     

    I see that you use a skimmer now Paul, but you haven't always.  I'd really like to know what you think about this, since I've got to decide whether to use a skimmer in the new setup.

     

    Thanks for reading.

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