acrylic paint in the new reef?

[reddfish]

A little background...
Been working on a 100 gal reef system (55 gal. display, 25 gal fuge, 30 gal sump) for the past year or so. Almost got water in it, just fine tuning the details.

Such as...I painted the back of the display and fuge black. I then painted the spray bar returns black so the white pvc wouldn't stand out. I've been told this is not a big deal (toxicity wise) to critters in the system. Since then, I've begun to think the painted pvc idea was possibly a rotten decision. I plan on stocking with Marshall uncured LR, and have NO desire to watch it all die away over my first year in reefing (this is my first reef system) because I built in a toxin leaching piece of pvc death. I've been mulling over this for the last few weeks as adding water to this dream gets closer, justifying concerns on both sides of this question, but haven't come up with any solid reasoning to do either other than rebuilding the spraybar and dealing with the white just to satisfy my paranoia.

Please help if you have any info/personal experience regarding the leaching properties or possibilities of acrylic paint in saltwater. Thanks in advance!!

 

[Anonymous]

Chances are pretty good, painted or not that if your water is of decent quality that its going to get overgrown with corraline algae so why bother painting it in the first place?

But, if you want black without the worry of having something painted in there why not switch out the PVC with a "bar" of loc-line? - Its a LOT more expensive but its already black and allows for a lot more control in where flow goes..

 

[ZooKeeper1]

I agree pvc gets covered with coralline very quickly. I dont see any benifit to painting it. Even if it doesn't hurt anything, salt water is so corrosive it probably wouldn't last long.

 

[reddfish]

Thanks for the replies. With this being my first reef, not knowing how long the coralline would take to encrust limited my perspective. Rebuild it is!

 

[Anonymous]

Don't get too frustrated though if it takes you a while to get corraline growth.. - It can be fickle, especially with new reefers and even with very experienced, highly attentive reefers who are starting new tanks.

Corraline generally takes a little while to start in new systems. - The key from what I've seen is good, stable water quality.

I transferred the majority of the contents of a 30 that had great corraline growth to a 10g almost a month ago and the only place I'm seeing new growth is on the old rocks where there was already heavy encrustation.

If you haven't heard it a million times already, the number one ingredient in successful reefing is patience. :wink:

 

[greenman]

I wouldn't be worried about the paint causing any problems. More so I would think the paint will chip off in time. Action of snails and other things scraping the glass.