Feelers Is Back, and with a wee update- pics of my new tank.

[Feelers]

Well well, hey everyone, good to see Tonmo's still going strong, I've been busy with uni and I havent been able to sort out where I'm gonna live next year, so the fish tank setup has been on the back burner.

Well this all changed on Friday, I was looking on NZ's version of Ebay and I saw a totally amazing deal. Complete marine setup, with some soft corals and fish, fairly good looking 450 litre (120 gallon) tank. The best thing is the whole shebang will cost $700NZ, - which is about $470US. The reason it went so cheap is that its in a relativly small town that's about an hours drive from the city I'm in, had it been here it would have gone for much more.
I'm going to sell the wet/dry filter, sell the fish, sell the corals and interestingly the guy forgot to mention it but I believe there are Tunze Streams in there also(top right), which will be worth a few bob too!

If it all goes to plan with the selling, I will hopefully be able to pay for the cost of the tank - so basically a 120 gallon tank/stand for free!
As for the pictures, these are the pics on the auction, I hate posting blurry pictures, when I get it setup I'll take some better ones.

It obviously has some pretty bad cyano problems, but my skimmer should hopefully take care of that. I'm stoked with it and I havent seen it in person yet!

 

[Brock Fluharty]

Looks like hair algae to me.

 

[Animal Mother]

That's a pretty sweet deal.

 

[Nancy]

Welcome back!

Nancy

 

[Feelers]

Looks like hair algae to me.

I believe you are correct, while I know lots on the theory of marine keeping I dont have much practical experience, so temporarily keeping these corals/fish etc will be a first for me.

 

[joefish84]

if you need anything help wise with reef keeping let me know ive been doing it for about 6 years now and i have a friend that is in charge of the coral propigation labs at college of charleston's marine biology school.

what kind of lighting are you running the tank looks awfully yellow which may be why your getting alot of algea. you want your lighting to be in the 12000 k to 20000k range (my reef tank is ~20000k)

get a lawn mower blenny to take care of that hair algea problem

 

[Feelers]

The tank is still at the guys place (I havent picked it up yet) , I dont know what lights he's running - he just said flourescent lighting, I have a t5 ballast available anyway, I'm going to run marine blue and white to get good attractive colours, and hopefully a red bulb for night-time viewing.

I know it goes against the Tonmo reccommendations(this is one aspect I've always questioned) but I'm not going to run wet/dry filtration. I dont believe it will be necessary with a decent skimmer, and also the octopus I'll be getting will be quite small. I'm looking to keep many coldwater things in there- local zoos and hopefully even staghorn corals so I will be paying careful attention to the water quality. I'm surprised that not so many people have taken to the berlin method, we are well behind the reefers on this issue and I am unsure whether this is from superstition or time old experience. I spose I will find out, if I have a problem with nitrates I can always incorporate a W/D filter into my sump.

Im going to keep all the rocks in a barrel with the tunze or power head and cook them for a while, until I setup the main tank which could well be next year, and by that stage the algae should be well and truely gone. At the moment I just want to unload the livestock and keep the rock alive! I'll also get the tank drilled etc for the overflows and double return that I have planned. I have a super nuts pump (8200LPH) so I figure I need some good drainage haha.

 

[DHyslop]

I'm surprised that not so many people have taken to the berlin method, we are well behind the reefers on this issue and I am unsure whether this is from superstition or time old experience. I spose I will find out, if I have a problem with nitrates I can always incorporate a W/D filter into my sump.

Its about the bioload. The Berlin model works great for reefs because there's very little load on the system, but will crash and burn in a large fish-only system. Think about a Berlin system as a miniature ecosystem and the wet/dry as a life-support system for a big organism.

I'm sure my two cuttles could have gotten along well in my big tank (about 100 gallons water volume) without the wet/dry just because they were so small. But if I get a bimac in there and it grows to two and a half pounds, I'm going to need each and every bioball

Also, a misconception: if the Berlin isn't cutting it and you need a W/D, the symptom will be ammonia/nitrite and not nitrate. Nitrate is the comparatively-benign end-member of the truncated cycle. The presence of ammonia or nitrite means there is not enough filtration capacity for the bioload of the tank at that given instant. The presence of nitrate is natural and is only removed three ways: water changes, deep sand bed or plants. I'm a believer in DSBs for reef tanks (its freshman chemistry) but again with a decent sized ceph there's a capacity issue and you'd probably never see a dent in nitrate.

Good luck,

Dan