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Thread: ATS for 120 Reef

  1. #21
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    It's all just a matter of degree. If you scrub strong, but feed strong, you'll be able to keep the same softies as if you fed light but scrubbed light. The difference is, by feeding strong all your other corals (and small fish) get much more food (10 time more). You also have the option of liquid coral food, preferably continuously. That'll put lots of nitrate and phosphate into the water for the softies.

  2. #22
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    I understand what you're saying that if I feed a lot more, that will dirty up the water more and the corals will get more phos and nitrate. Maybe I should reprhase the question. If I tune the scrubber in moderately (right now it's only on reverse cycle, from about 4pm to about 7am) and he is currently feeding about 1 cube of brine shrimp and 1 cube of nori every other day, with occasional feedings of pellet food when a client's kid want to feed them (it's in a dentist's office). Since I've added many more fish, I think he's feeding them a bit more liberally, but overall still relatively sparingly.

    I'm still struggling with a way to ask a question and get some kind of definitive answer. You say that softies, zoas, leathers, and xenia like water that is a little dirtier. So in the extreme case where you have no fish whatsoever, just a clean-up-crew in an established tank, would these types of corals not survive without some kind of supplementation? Maybe my question is not specific to scrubbers, but rather to the needs for corals. I guess what I understood from reading so much about ATS vs skimmers/refugium/etc was that the scrubber takes out what is bad and leaves in what the corals prefer for 'food'. Now I'm finding out that it is not only taking out what Xenias need to survive (and I was prepared to frag out the Xenias to others) but now I find out that the leathers, softies, mushrooms and zoas could struggle, all of which are abundant in this system! This is kind of frustrating to find this out now, but I'm glad I did before they all started withering away.

    I guess I had the understanding that most coral growth is slowed or halted in the presence of just about any detectable level of phosphate. The scrubber would remove this, leading to healthier growth, is what I understood. Same thing with Nitrate. So what needs/prefers the super-clean water? I'm hoping it's the really super-cool and expensive LPS/SPS kind because if that's the case, I could totally live with that. I would be more than willing to get rid of leather and softies, etc over time if that's the case.

    Here's the tank for reference








  3. #23
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    Without a doubt, LPS/SPS do best in low nutrient, high food water. Softies like the ones you have like a bit nore nutrients in the water. In my case, zoo's do great and multiply, mushrooms stay the same size, but I can't keep xenia. But I'm not trying to either. I'm doing feeding tests with double scrubbing power. All you need to do is remove a bulb or two, or use less lighting time, or feed a lot more, until you find a balance.

  4. #24
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    I guess it will take some time to balance the system out. So basically, if I test regularly for Nitrate and Phosphate, I would want to see a minimal amount of both in order for the Xenias to survive? Like 0.1-0.2 Nitrate and 0.03-0.10 phosphate for instance? The Xenias have been going gangbusters in 0 nitrate water for months, so I'm wondering if that is not necessarily a limiting factor.

    Just some other observations, I was at the tank today. Inland screwed up again and didn't ship my seed screen, so I didn't get that installed. I did remove the screen from the tube (by the way, my bypass system works awesome) and the screen is showing what could be some brown algae growth already, but it could just be getting a little dirty also. However, it was not growing on the section of the screen that is inside to tube. It is growing right at the slot line. I didn't have time to add the blocker. What I did was take the dremel bit I used to cut the slot (which is actually a drywall cutter) and added a bunch of cutouts about 1/8-3/16" on alternating sides of the slot.

    The water flow across the screen was very even before, and it didn't change that much. What is interesting is that the slot may have closed itself a bit, because the bit was pretty tight in the already but section (the original slot). What I was going for was 2 things, to relieve the pressure and to let larger particles through to prevent clogging. I think I achieved the latter, but when I reconnected it and opened the post-pump shutoff, it still flowed over the emergency spillway at about the same rate.

    Here's the screen flow





    Originally, it was even at the top, then streamed together into lines about 3" apart. So I guess it's past the initial 'break-in period'.

    Seed screen (hopefully) will come tomorrow.

    On other thing - I noticed that the tank kind of smells a little like dirty feet. Any possible explanation for that? Maybe it's that there is no longer a mechanical filter. I was changing 100 micron filter socks about every 6 days. One would fill all the way up until overflowing, and the other would get about 1/3 of the way due to a siphon effect that I never bothered to fix. So that's quite a bit of waste that is now staying in the system. I'm wondering if, because of that, there will be a time frame in which the system will go through a re-balancing. After recently reading the article about microbubbles, there was another section to the article about old tank syndrome in reef systems (which really had mainly to due with the timeframe needed to correctly establish a new SW tank). Sounds like changing things up a bit might not be a bad thing...

  5. #25
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    After looking at a few other designs (again) I think I am safe to extend the cutouts along the slot quite a bit. I guess I'll go a little at a time until the flow maxes out and nothing comes through the emergency overflow with the post-pump valve all the way open.

    Also, I thought of something else to help filter out the bubbles that wouldn't stop pods - BIO BALLS! Finally, a valid use for them. How big do the pods get that are on the screen? I'm guessing they vary from microscopic to big enough to not make it through pump intake foam?

  6. #26
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    Just experiment with the xenia and see what happens.

    I don't recommend the IA seed pieces because they are not the best type of algae for filtering... you want green hair algae, not dark turf which blocks the light. When my screen grows turf, I scrape a hack saw blade across it to remove it.

    The flow on the screen will fill in as the growth occurs. No need for a light blocker when you have acrylic walls.

    I also don't recommend slots; the flow will be more even without them. Your pipe is too long to clog; plus you have an overflow anyways.

    Your screen is growning normally to start. Will be green in a week.

    Tank should not smell. Only smell should be like the ocean, if even that. See how it is in a week or two.

    The pods you get are only 7-day-old baby copepods, because the cleaning kills them each week. They will not get stuck in bio balls.

  7. #27
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    Well, I wish I had known that before getting IA to send the screen for the 3rd time - would have saved me $30.

    So if the brown turf is the kind that all of these filters were originally designed with, why are they not the best? Is it just more effective with the green?

    If I do end up using the seed screen, will I ever get the green hair algae growth, or will the red turf just take over completely?

  8. #28
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    Verticals were never "designed" for any type; it's just that green hair is what lets the most light and flow through. Green hair will overgrow the turf if things are going well. It's all in the faq.

  9. #29
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    Well, I might as well use it since I have it. Arrived this morning, going up there over lunch to put in on.

    Why don't I have to worry about the growth into the slot? How does having acrylic between the lights and the screens change things?

  10. #30
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    Re: ATS for 120 Reef

    Because if it sprays from the slot, it's contained:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJxzeAgOS_M

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