Starting All Over!

[rhoople]

I was sitting in the livingroom bored one day, and had just conqured the dreaded Elephant Ear Sponge debacel, when it hit me. Why not try and do something completely different. I had about 6 powerheads throught out the tank, and all the sockets used on 2 power strips, so I knew it was time to try something different. It would also give me a chance to get my creative juices flowing again. I'm going to use about 240 Lbs of sugar fine sand, and an extra 40 lbs of live sand just to get this new project started. I'll only have 2 pwower heads in the tank, with some PVC tubing for water flow. I won't be gluing any of this, because I know I'll be wanting to adjust this very often at first. I'll try to down load pics as I go along, and right now I have only 90 Lb's of the sand, with the rest to show up on my doorstep early this week.

[soundman]

Wow, I bet you have to put on scuba gear to work in a corner tank that big! Can't wait to see the pics.

[rhoople]

Being that I'm new here, I am having a hard time loading pics. Can you give me a step by step process for doing this? I really want to show the progress of this project in detail. Yes, the corner is very hard to reach, but not impossible.... I think the Radius of this tank is only 34-36" Plus it's 24" deep, so yes, I do get wet all the time.

[soundman]

A lot of peeps here use photobucket.com, but I haven't tried that yet. When you log into NR.com, click on "gallery" near the top of your screen. Then click on "Upload Photos" just a little lower and to the right of "gallery". If you have the pics saved to your computer as a jpg, jpeg, png, or gif, no larger than a 1024k file size, you can upload your pics to NR.com. Once you've done that, locate your pic in your gallery and copy and paste the "BB Code" to your post in your thread. If I've done a good enough job of explaining it, your pic should show up in your post when you click "Add Reply" or Preview Post". hth

[rhoople]

The Blue, Black substance is the Elephant Ear Sponge.

 

 

This is how the pluming is going to look at first. I am gluing nothing so I can adjust or add when needed. The pumps are RIO 3100's, but am going to upgrade them to Mag Drive 12's or 18's in the near future.

[wav3form]

That sounds like a lot of sand.

[rhoople]

I"M SHOOTING FOR A DEPTH OF ABOUT 4-5 INCHES OF SAND RIGHT NOW. JUST ANOTHER EXPERIMENT ON MY PART, WITH THE GUIDANCE OF CALFO AND FENNER. THESE TWO GUYS SAY A DEEP SAND BED IS A VERY GOOD THING FOR A REAF SYSTEM. MY WATER FLOW DESIGN IS SOMEWHAT LIKE THE ONE I SAW AT MY LFS, AND I HAVE PLENTY OF WATER MOVEMENT, BUT NOT SO MUCH THAT IT WILL KNOCK THINGS OVER. THE HARDEST PART WAS FINDING THE RIGHT FITTINGS FOR THE PUMPS. LIKE I SAID, I'LL KEEP EVERYONE POSTED AS TO MY SUCCESS, OR FAILURE. WISH ME LUCK..... IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING YOU CAN ADD IN THIS ENDEAVOR, PLEASE SHARE IT WITH ME. I'LL NEED ALL THE HELP I CAN GET!!!!!!

[rhoople]

Well, I put the last 30# bag of sand in, now I have to wait for the cloudyness to subside. I hope to start aquascaping tomorrow, I'll keep posting pics untill you think I have it right. lol I'll have to work with what I have for rock, and I have about 90lb's of it right now, but only say, 6 pieces that are large, I'll have to work around it I guess. that's the fun part anyway. At least thats what they say.

 

This is what it looked like B4 the Redo, and after I scrubbed off all the sponge that killed everything!

 

 

[Toomin]

i be reading and waiting.

[rhoople]

I still have that first image!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rhoople]

Here is my first attempt at my new set-up, I'm looking for some constructive criticism

[rhoople]

And another!

 

[alexmurovec]

looks good, alot of flat area for corals.

[rhoople]

I just couldn't wait to put some things in...

 

And..

 

And

 

And

[shift_9k]

I would say more color, but other than that looks good.

[rhoople]

Yeah, not very colorfull for being 4 days old huh.

[c est ma]

This will be fun to follow!

 

I am very curious about "the great Elephant Ear Sponge debacle." Do you have a thread on that somewhere?

 

--Diane

[rhoople]

Yes, I started one when I signed up for the site. I was now first able to ID the stuf, when I opened the book "Invertebrates, a quick referance guide" by Julian Sprung. I have a pic with it in the background taken a few months ago. It's the Bule, Black looking stuff growing on everything!

 

[hecsrt-4]

Not trying to be disrectpectful or anything but did you do any research on saltwater tanks before you set this one up.

 

Am just saying that because I noticed a clown fish in one of your pictures.

 

Hope your tank doesn't have a big cycle for the sake of your livestock.

 

Way to let your tank cycle

 

Patience is a virtue, which apparantly you my friend don't have

welcome to nano-reef.com and if you think this is bad post this on reefcentral LOL

[Oregon]

I'm tracking this thread, interesting. I would like to hear about your test stats. Keep us updated on the nitrates especially along with how many water changes and how many gallons per change. I'd be interested to read about the results from a bed this deep. Cheers

[rhoople]

Well after 5 days now, my test for Cal. is 460, my test for nitrate is clear, my test for nitrite is clear, Amonia is clear, but it's early yet, and all test kits are from Salifert.

I take no offence to your remarks, I even asked for them. Water changes come every third day now, and it's a 5 gallon change. As far as research goes, yes I've done some. This is my third salt water tank, I've had saltwater tanks for about 20 years now, and have all the concepts changed since I first started.... One tank just fish, the rest reaf tanks, and none smaller than 55 gal.(I'll never be without one) and yes patience is a virtue, which I do posess. As for the deep sand bed. The books I have read, (and that would be many, but I like the ones written by Tony Calfo, and Bob Fenner best, they have some humor to them at least), have all talked about the bennies of a deep bed for nitrate control. I quote, "For optimum nitrate control, always maintain a depth over 3" with 4" to 6" recomended". they also talk about sand turn over, not a complete turn over of the sand bed, just a gental stir once in awhile. There's much more on sand bed depth, but you get the point. Everything in this tank is from this tank except for the water, and most of the sand. Oh, and I added a few pieces of live rock too. So keep the blasts comming! Oh, my kids SRT-4 is faster than yours.......lol

[ibbrantan]

So keep the blasts comming! Oh, my kids SRT-4 is faster than yours.......lol

 

my 1gen eclipse gsx is faster than your kids srt-4 ..........lol

[shift_9k]

wow... your kids srt is fast..... wow

[c est ma]

Yes, I started one when I signed up for the site. I was now first able to ID the stuf, when I opened the book "Invertebrates, a quick referance guide" by Julian Sprung. I have a pic with it in the background taken a few months ago. It's the Bule, Black looking stuff growing on everything!

 

 

 

Ah, I see what you mean. Only in my book, he calls it the "Chicken Liver Sponge." I assume that it was encrusting some of your corals?

 

From what I've heard about sponges being able to regenerate from very tiny particles, I'm not sure that just scrubbing rocks would completely eradicate it.

 

The book also says that this sponge may have a photosynthetic algal symbiont, which also complicates matters...

 

Well, I do hope you've conquered it!

 

--Diane

[rhoople]

I hope so too. It sure killed a lot of cool corals. Had it mixed up, he calls it just plain Ear Sponge, Elephant Ear Sponge was a different one. Which book are you looking at?