Miss Wiggle And Big Ian's First Marine Tank!

[SkiFletch]

Nah, a fuge is usually ran at a lower turnover rate. Deadspots are just fine and a slow-diffuse flow over the bubble walls and through the chamber is prefferred. I'd aim for 10x turnover. Remember that you'll have to account for head losses when sizing the powerhead. If the top of your refugium is say 2 feet above the powerhead, you'll need to account for between 2.5 and 3 feet of head pressure to target your pump. Not sure how much you guys know about pumps, does that make sense?

 

[BigIan]

your refering to the power head to pump into the fuge.... right


what about in the fuge its self we`d be wanting to pop one into there wouldn`t we?

 

[SkiFletch]

Heh, yes I am. Gonna borrow something from Marine Depot here, hope they dont mind What you listed is a 15g tank and suitable for a fuge. You're gonna want about 150-200gph of turnover within the tank. So I'll imagine your pod fuge will be 1 foot off the tank and the top therefore 2 foot off the tank. Adding in some head losses you're prolly gonna want to size a pump for 3 feet of head. So if you look at this nice handy chart (thank you Marine depot)

look at the 3' level and go across. You'll find that the mag 2 pump would be perfect for your setup at 170gph for that specific head loss. Through the use of bubble walls you'll make the flow diffuse through out the tank. Macroalgae does not need strong flowrate as its commonly found thriving in tidal pools with little to no flow. THat make sense?

 

[BigIan]

the top of the fuge will be sat about 6 - 8 inches above the water level in the main tank so pumping the water into the fuge won`t realy be an issue i was going to have either a 1200 lph or a 900lph power head feeding it. but was wondering about powerheads inside the fuge as surely that would mince any pods ect that are in there?

or do i use bubble wall type devices to move the water around in there?

 

[SkiFletch]

Nah, powerheads inside the fuge are not necesary. Basicaly one powerhead goes into a first thin empthy chamber. That is controlled via a bubble wall. Water flows over the wall into the middle chamber where the macroalgae is housed. Water flows through that chamber on its way to a third chamber with an overflow device of some sort (box, weir, durso, what have you). The first bubble wall breaks up the flow from the powerhead and makes a nice diffuse flow through out the whole fuge that eventually overflows into your tank

 

[Dalejr_802]

*snicker*

If your corals are opening back up, thats a good sign. Usually when things get heat burned, they wont open back up. My poor pocillipora met its fate this way. Tank got up to 87 or 88 when my A/C quit on the hottest day of the summer (why cant they go on the "bearable" days?). Poor guy never extended his polyps again... Slowly necrosed and died.

I gotta be honest though guys and say that a skimmer is not really necessary for you right now. You have very hardy fish and corals that can handle some dissolved organic compounds. Nitrates are not easily skimmed out anyways as they are not hydrophillic or hydrophobic enough to really get caught amidst bubble fractionation. You're only feeding two clowns every other day so your waste load is low. A skimmer frankly should be low on your priority list until you can get a TDS meter and verify that RO discharge. Until you start significantly adding livestock, a skimmer is probably a waste of money at this time. Nitrates first, DOC (dissolved organic compounds) second

lil ? out here

wat is a fuge

and i already bought a protein skimmer and im only cyling and i have 2 damsel and im trying to get 2 clowns and i will try to catch my damsels so my ? is i only have a protein skimmer and u said that Nitrates first, DOC (dissolved organic compounds) second

can u guys help me out im kinda confuse

ohh and my tank is about 2 weeks old i have a protein skimmer, powerheads and a 26 watts light

 

[BigIan]

i was going to have the first compartment housing the skimmer. then a divider flowing to the main compartment, then another divider for the return plus it would be able to house anything such as nitra-zorb or rowa phos.then alowing it to flow back to the tank.

would it be ok to make the divides out of plastic and aquarium silicone???


Dalejr_802, if you read the thread the MRs and i bought a fully set up tank and we`ve been having some issues trying to get the nitrates down.
we were thinking about buying a new skimmer but as ski fletch said we need to concentrate on the nitrates first..


but good news...


i got the skimmer working again

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yup working skimmer and tds meter's now on it's way. we've got the price for the fuge tank, got the stand yesterday, just need to spk to the lfs about getting some of this algae shiznet, slightly concerned though, one of the blokes who runs it said he could get us some last weekend, then we went in yest to ask him to order us some, he wasn't there but the other bloke said he doesn't think he can get hold of any first bloke's brother is his supplier though so maybe he can't officially through work or something but can aside from that. Anyway he's back in work tomorrow so we'll see then. So fingers crossed in a couple of week's we should have our fuge up and running.

 

[maidenfan]

what a great thread this is keep it up guys your doing really well the tank looks great

 

[BigIan]

well we just tested the salt water straight from the RO unit after we`ve added salt and its showing 12.5 ish on the nitrates.

so we`re going to wait for confirmation from a tds meter when it eventually arrives but were thinking we need new membranes...

we`ve also just been and bought an atinic light and its ace our corrals glow in the dark ::

we also just discovered a tube worm thing on on of the pieces of LR

well we just tested the salt water straight from the RO unit after we`ve added salt and its showing 12.5 ish on the nitrates.

so we`re going to wait for confirmation from a tds meter when it eventually arrives but were thinking we need new membranes...

we`ve also just been and bought an atinic light and its ace our corrals glow in the dark ::

we also just discovered a tube worm thing on on of the pieces of LR

Also how do we "flush" an RO unit???

 

[Matthew5664]

sounding great any pics for us pic hungy peep's?

sorry cant help with the flushing getting my RO from the fishshop at the mo.

 

[SkiFletch]

Dont bother getting macroalgae from your store... Just ask some people around here if they'd be willing to trim some for you. I know Matthew5664 has helped out some members around here in the past and I'm sure some other old salties in the UK would help out too. I'd just give you some of mine if you weren't many thousands of miles away

When making dividers for your fuge, try to use the same material that the tank is made out of for the dividers. For example, if you buy a standard glass tank, go purchase some un-tempered window glass from a local hardware or glass store and use silicone. If its an acrylic tank, go to the hardware store and get some say 4mm acrylic walls and some acrylic glue. Plastics dont adhere all that well to silicone, so its better to use glass on glass, or plastic on plastic. Dunno what its like in the UK, but around here, most hardware stores sell both thin acrylic and thin window glass (~4mm thick) and will cut a few pieces to size. Thats how I built mine

As for the membrane, can find a manual for that model online somewhere? If not, can you post any pics of your RO setup and maybe I can help you out. there are a few typical setups for RO membranes and depending on which one you have, we can advise how to fix it

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah we'll get some pics up soon. got to get the wedding pics off my camera first, bit slack

we've put plans for the fuge on hold until we get the tds meter now, then it'll be replace the membrane's and fingers crossed after that the nitrates should start to drop with regular water changes for another week or so. Then when the nitrates are down we can just keep it ticking over for a little bit while we save up for everything else we want to do!

yeah we were very excited by our feather duster appearing the other day, it's cool! keeps popping out and back in again. I figure if it's just showing it's head then surley conditions must be improving?!?

found a new shop for marine's yesterday, amazing selection of coral's, lifestock was top notch, everything was a few quid cheaper than elsewhere. They even stocked jellyfish!! Very impressed with them. And the bloke who runs it had some blue stuff like us and he said it's definately a sponge, so the fact that that's thriving also means we're doing something right.

 

[BigIan]

Ro unit...

yellow pipe is mains feed, black pipe is waste and blue is RO

 

[Matthew5664]

My ears where burning! I wondered why?


Comming along I see Miss wiggle/Big Ian, I do have some surplus Pulsing Xina as well you can have when your ready just PM me to sort out address.