Hi All!!
Whoa - what a great pleasure to finaly find a south african site on Marine fish and reef keeping!!!
A little bit of history on me and my tank/s...
I've started with a very small marine tank about 2 years ago. This was one of those small 40 liter tanks. This was a start of a great journey filled with pleasure, pain and more pleasure. In this tank I had 2 Clown fish, 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 hermit crap and 3 small pieces of live rock.
This tank brought me so much pleasure that I’ve decided that I’m going to convert my 300 liter Malawi tank into a reef/fish tank.
The first 6 months with this tank was a big success. Until IT appeared in the tank! The IT is the fearful green hairy algae. (ok for me it is was a very bad experience!) The cause – Nitrates – a lot of nitrates. I’ve tried water changes, a lot of water changes, added more bioballs (ok I now know that the bio-balls caused the problem). At a stage I’ve decided to sell everything because I just couldn’t get rid of the hairy algae. All my corals and live rock was covered with it. I’ve tried to brush it off with a tooth brush – it worked for a while, but the hairy demons always came back!!
The guy at our local fish store convinced me to sell – I’m very glad I didn’t.
I’ve started to make a couple of changes. And hopefully it will work.
So my new setup is as follows:
I’ve purchased a new 300 liter tank with cabinet.
The old tank is now standing outside – I’m using it as a deep sand bed filter. This is connected to the new tank.
For the deep sand bed filter I’ve used the following:
1. Sea sand. (I’ve collected a little bit of sea sand the last time I went down to the coast) This is not more that lets say 15 kg..
2. Crushed corral – the fine type, and some less fine type from my old sump
3. River sand. (I’m hoping that this won’t cause any silica problems…)
I still need to add more, because my depth is only about 10 cm. I want to push this to 20 cm.
I’ve also added some algae – cauliptra. (not sure about the spelling here)
This setup is only running for about 2 weeks now, and I can already see small bristle worms and other critters in the deep sand bed.
I still want to connect my protein skimmers in my tank out side. But will only do this a bit later. (when I’ve got more spare time)
The nitrates are still high, but this is expected as this is still a new setup.
I still got some green hairy algae on the live rock (this is from the previous tank).
I’m not going to add my corals and fish yet. I will let this setup run for a while before I add them to their new home!
I’m only going to use the deep sand bed as filter; I’m not going to add any other filters to the tank.
So that’s me and my new setup. I’ll try to document all the phases with this setup. (nitrate levels, development on the deep sand bed ext…)
Any advice/tips and tricks that I can implement on this tank will be appreciated!
Whoa - what a great pleasure to finaly find a south african site on Marine fish and reef keeping!!!
A little bit of history on me and my tank/s...
I've started with a very small marine tank about 2 years ago. This was one of those small 40 liter tanks. This was a start of a great journey filled with pleasure, pain and more pleasure. In this tank I had 2 Clown fish, 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 hermit crap and 3 small pieces of live rock.
This tank brought me so much pleasure that I’ve decided that I’m going to convert my 300 liter Malawi tank into a reef/fish tank.
The first 6 months with this tank was a big success. Until IT appeared in the tank! The IT is the fearful green hairy algae. (ok for me it is was a very bad experience!) The cause – Nitrates – a lot of nitrates. I’ve tried water changes, a lot of water changes, added more bioballs (ok I now know that the bio-balls caused the problem). At a stage I’ve decided to sell everything because I just couldn’t get rid of the hairy algae. All my corals and live rock was covered with it. I’ve tried to brush it off with a tooth brush – it worked for a while, but the hairy demons always came back!!
The guy at our local fish store convinced me to sell – I’m very glad I didn’t.
I’ve started to make a couple of changes. And hopefully it will work.
So my new setup is as follows:
I’ve purchased a new 300 liter tank with cabinet.
The old tank is now standing outside – I’m using it as a deep sand bed filter. This is connected to the new tank.
For the deep sand bed filter I’ve used the following:
1. Sea sand. (I’ve collected a little bit of sea sand the last time I went down to the coast) This is not more that lets say 15 kg..
2. Crushed corral – the fine type, and some less fine type from my old sump
3. River sand. (I’m hoping that this won’t cause any silica problems…)
I still need to add more, because my depth is only about 10 cm. I want to push this to 20 cm.
I’ve also added some algae – cauliptra. (not sure about the spelling here)
This setup is only running for about 2 weeks now, and I can already see small bristle worms and other critters in the deep sand bed.
I still want to connect my protein skimmers in my tank out side. But will only do this a bit later. (when I’ve got more spare time)
The nitrates are still high, but this is expected as this is still a new setup.
I still got some green hairy algae on the live rock (this is from the previous tank).
I’m not going to add my corals and fish yet. I will let this setup run for a while before I add them to their new home!
I’m only going to use the deep sand bed as filter; I’m not going to add any other filters to the tank.
So that’s me and my new setup. I’ll try to document all the phases with this setup. (nitrate levels, development on the deep sand bed ext…)
Any advice/tips and tricks that I can implement on this tank will be appreciated!
Raven
