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View Full Version : Going Turff whould this be ok?



RAJOD
01-17-2010, 11:59 PM
I have a 300 gallon FO with a few snail hermits. Artificial reef with 2 inches of sand for looks and jawfish.

Problem - Hair Algae (I have a display tank scrubber) :) Controlled via Sea Hares. They love hair algae.

Filtration

1. Center overflow to 30 gallon Bio ball sump - return to skimmer and spray bar at top of tank.

2. Closed Loop - 3 inch floor drain --> pump ---> Canister filter --> UV --> chiller --> bottom of tank return flow.

3. Phosphate reactor

4. 30 gallon water changes per week.

Everything is good in terms of nitrates but the hair and dark red cyano is ugly. Funny my PC lights are 5 feet above areas where its growing. It grows just fine and not 4 inches from the light. My tank is 5 feet tall.

I was going to get rid of my Chiller and move the UV to make room for a small 12x12 refugium. Then I read about turf filters.

Everything is hard plummed so it would have been a pain to redo it all.

I was thinking I could:

Get rid of the external skimmer and build a tall and narrow turf filter. It could be 22 inches tall and 20 inches long.
Lighting could be either 4 23 watt grow bulbs (2 per side) or maybe a long PC on each side. (40 watt per side?)

I still want to keep the bio balls for back up redundancy in case my turf filter dies off.

Flow - 20x35 = 700 gph. Is this the proper math for the flow? Right now my return does both skimmer and spray bars.
Probably 400 to spray and 300 gph to skimmer. Little giant 4 pressure pump (850gph) some loss due to head.
Probably just get a low pressure pump for turf or I could just get a 2000gph reflow marlin pump to replace the little giant.

I still want the UV so I'll probably keep the canister as a prefilter for it.
Loose the Rowa phos (Expensive)
Loose the Sea Hares - I sort of like them, but I can deal with the loss :)
loose the skimmer!

Wanted to try that miracle mud to help my Tangs (Its FO) was thinking maybe I could rig something up in my existing bio ball sump.

Pods, I don't think I have any. Assuming I don't can you just buy them to seed the tank? If I don't have any do I really want them?

Not sure the best way to go.

Interested in any comments or suggestions.

SantaMonica
01-18-2010, 03:33 AM
While I work up some ideas, post a lot of pics of the tank, sump (from all angles), and area around the tank.