A few pics of my 2 metre tank, as it is currently

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Welcome Jacques, whats an ammo - ball. Your phos reactor seems very full. How often do you change the media , and do you normally use this much?
 
Hiya all again.

Many thanks for the welcome wishes.

Viper - I have SeaChem PhosGuard in my phosphate reactor. I have been using this product for a while now, and unfortunately I cannot tell you by how much it actually worked (I used to use it in a sock.... thing.... in my chemical section of my tank).

I have only added the phostphate reactor on Friday.

sunburst - not sure how much I should use.... it looks like it might be too empty for me, though..... As I said above, have only started using the phosphate reactor on Friday.

Anyone know "how much" phosphate reagent media should be used in a reactor??

I still have a bit of hair-algae problems...... there-for the PhosGuard.....

My NO3 is very low - below "2" on my testing kit.....
I do not have a PhosPhate testing kit at the moment though.....

I have a 500 litre per hour pump supplying the water to the phostphate reactor.... which I am still going to restrict even further.... it is pumping the water at a slow rate (but not a trickle) through the reactor..... the media "moves" a bit in the reactor due to the water feed.......

Any ideas on how exactly a phosphate reactor should be applied?

Sunburst - an "Ammo-ball" is supposedly a plastic ball with some specialized activated carbon in it, which is suppose to remove ALL forms of ammonia from the water. They sell it here at multiple different LFS'.....
 
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I fill up about a third of my reactor with media.

The manufacturer's recommended flow rate is to just have the top 1cm of the media 'bubbling' or moving. Although after seeing some of the awesome overseas sps tanks, some of them have the entire media moving around, so they have quite a strong flow rate going through the media, not too sure if this is the correct way though.
 
hey jaquesb welcom and just a few questions: wot make is that phos reactor and how did u get that WeiPro to skimm that well?
 
Thanks, Viper. My media is moving a somewhat at the top, but I don't think TOO much though..... I will monitor it.

Hello Joe - thanks for the welcome. You know what - the Phostphate reactor is actually originally a "fluidized bed filter" (not too sure of the make at the moment - will go and check and report back)...... to which SeaChem PhosGuard has been added......

I think that I prefer having a little bit "too much" Phosguard, rather than too little, as the frozen food seems to contain quite a bit of phosphates.... So I would like to scrub my tank's water better, rather than not.

Joe. The pump/power-head I am using for my WeiPro is much stronger than what is suggested. I think that I have a 2700 litre per hour power-head on the WeiPro 2013. Therefor the semi-decent skimming. I have a "reasonable" load in my tank, i.e.: 13 small to medium fish, and about 11 corals... And 4 anemonies.....

Both my skimmers seem to work quite well. I do clean them often though, as well as re-adjust them every so often, to ensure that I get optimum skimming out of them.... I also run both my skimmers a little "wet".....
 
jacquesb said:
Thanks, Viper. My media is moving a somewhat at the top, but I don't think TOO much though..... I will monitor it.

Hello Joe - thanks for the welcome. You know what - the Phostphate reactor is actually originally a "fluidized bed filter" (not too sure of the make at the moment - will go and check and report back)...... to which SeaChem PhosGuard has been added......

I think that I prefer having a little bit "too much" Phosguard, rather than too little, as the frozen food seems to contain quite a bit of phosphates.... So I would like to scrub my tank's water better, rather than not.

Joe. The pump/power-head I am using for my WeiPro is much stronger than what is suggested. I think that I have a 2700 litre per hour power-head on the WeiPro 2013. Therefor the semi-decent skimming. I have a "reasonable" load in my tank, i.e.: 13 small to medium fish, and about 11 corals... And 4 anemonies.....

Both my skimmers seem to work quite well. I do clean them often though, as well as re-adjust them every so often, to ensure that I get optimum skimming out of them.... I also run both my skimmers a little "wet".....
Click to expand...

Ive read that the phosguard product is not ideal as it contains alumenium.. however i just cannot remember the link , i do remember reading that AM antifos is a better option..
Just sometihing u should look into ..
otherwise u looking in good shape .
 
Hello all - a quick update on my tank, as of this past weekend...
A full tank pic:
DSC00260sml.jpg



I have the following now:
- BOTH my 150 watt metal halides are back online (running BLV 150 watt DE 14000K globes)
- I have changed the "Standard" Dasz "Aquaglow" (or something like that - the pinkish globe) to Sylvania 10000K Day-light globes (currently have the following then:
in each T5 unit: 1 x Dasz 13000K T5 54 watt globe, 1x Dasz 54watt Actinic, 1 x 54watt Sylvania 10000K)
- I have the following power-heads/pumps pumping water around in my tank:
= 2 x ReSun 15000's, 1 x 1900 litre per hour AquaH2O power-head, 1 x no-name 2000 litre/hour power-head, and 6000 litre/hour returns from the following 2 pumps: 1 x Dolphin 2000 litre/hour, and 1 x 4000 litre / hour no-name power-head (this is before head-loss)....

My algae problem is clearly receding, with algae growth nearly stopping completely, and the hair algae that was there, about 45% died off already.... I will manually remove a lot of this this coming weekend again....

I also got another 4.3kg's of Premium Live Rock (thanks to Liaquat) in my tank....
(the pic is before I added the new live-rock).
So, we will see .... I am making progress at least...

I am also getting a new skimmer at the end of the month - a small recirc ReefOcto which will concurrent to my other 2 skimmers, at least until the ReefOcto has settled in, then I will most likely remove the WeiPro SA-2013 skimmer (to be used in my future FOWLR 300 litre tank)....

So, I am moving the right direction, I think.....

BABY STEPS.......... BABY STEPS....

OHHH YES - before I forget: I have already changed my feeding regime to the following (don't want to make TOO big a change all at once):
No feeding in the mornings (used to feed pellets)...
Alternating feeding pellets/flakes, and my own seafood mix concoction..... so, feeding these two in the evenings ONLY on alternating days..... AND No feeding of commercial frozen food anymore - at all.....

Sorry to those of you who have already seen this post on another forum...
 
Hi Mekaeel. I reduced my feeding quite a bit, and when I re-did my aqua-scaping, I stirred up a lot of crap in my tank, which my skimmers took out (they were working overtime at the time, I had set my skimmers to skim very wet, and I was cleaning the cups out about 4 times during the day that I was working on my tank, and again about 4 times the following day).....

I also reduced my feeding a lot - and all of this seems to have made the big difference. And YES - I am running PhosGuard which definitely helped, but takes a MUCH slower approach (I have been running PhosGuard now for about 3 weeks)...

I will be clearing out some more of the dying hair-algae this coming weekend....
 
Looking good Jacques, how many fish do you have in your tank?
 
Hi Dean - I have 17 fish. Here's the list:
- 2 x False Percula's
- 1 x Fire Goby
- 1 x Black velvet Chromis
- 4 x Blue-green chromis
- 1 x Yellow-tail Blue Chromis
- 1 x Blue Devil Chromis
- 1 x Tomato clown (still a youngster)
- 2 x Clarkii Clowns
- 1 x Blue Mandarin
- 1 x Elongate Tang/Surgeon
- 2 x Yellow/Blue Doctor Tangs

Thanks for the comment.... Yeah - I am REALLY looking forward to having an algae free tank.... And I am quite happy so far with the aqua-scaping....

I will leave it as is for a while that my tank settles in, and then decide about redoing the aqua-scaping again and perhaps add even more power-heads, or perhaps a bottom spray-bar behind my rock work (to ensure no build-up of detritus)...
 
Many thanks Komodo.....

Yeah Mekaeel/Komodo - I know that I have a bit of a way to go still (with EVERYTHING), but at least it seems that I am on the right track.... And once I have the new skimmer, working in conjunction with my current skimmers (which does indeed skim like crazy - but clearly not enough), my tank will be without hair algae, and my corals will be MORE than happy....

Then I just need to add some more corals still :) - BUT, all in good time..... After the "decent skimmer", I will most likely spend some MORE money, on increasing my flow once again...... (currently at 39900 litres per hour in my tank, before the head-loss of my 6000 litre per hour return).... It seems that I will need to be around 59000 litres per hour, if I understand these guys correctly.....
 
Closing this thread now - as I have another thread running on my tank. For anyone who wish to see what my tank looked like in 2007 - have a look at the 1st pics in this tank...

:)

THEN - compare this to how my tank looks NOW!
 
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