after a day of playing with algae

[sparau]

Hi all,

I think i was fairly lucky the other day - guy selling his marine setup on ebay scheduled it to finish 3hrs after the football grand final (aussie superbowl equivalent) so basically no-one bid against me - so for $230 AUS (~$180US) i got:

4x2x2 tank with wier
stand and hood
baffled sump
6 aquafx 1800 powerheads
1 little powerhead
1 eheim sump return pump
1 peristaltic top up pump
skimmer
nitrite reactor
plumbing
digital thermometer

Well that was the good news - the bad news is the ebay ad didnt mention the free 1kg of algae and fetid bio balls It took most of a very smelly day to get it all clean and nice...

Now for a couple of questions:

1: We live next to the ocean and it is nice and clean here. I spoke to my LFS and he said you can do alright using sea water but it is best to perhaps get a UV sterilizer ($380- for a good one he says - ouch - i thought they were just a light !!) Or buy an RO/DI unit ($250-) and use fake salt.

Has anyone gone the route of using seawater here? I havent seen any mention... In some ways i think it would be better - ie. trace elements etc etc

2: This nitrite reactor - i dont see i should need it - should i do anything to it to keep it ok? It appears to have just been left full of salt water which i cant imagine is a good thing. Wouldnt it just fill up with bacteria and dying bacteria (ammonia?).

3: A couple of the power heads are missing the little hose and ball from near the outlet, will this matter? What does it do anyway?

4: This sump was set up with bio balls, some tube things and fake sand stuff - since it had been sitting around for ?? perhaps a couple of months with water in it i felt that any benficial bacteria in there would be offset by the probability that there was masses of bad chemistry going on and ditched the lot. I am going to set up a fuge with LR and some caluerpa (?sp). Do i need another baffle in it, most peeps i see have 2 for the water to run over, I have read that this is for removing the bubbles, but i think i would start running out of space for that.

Thanks in advance for anyone patient enough to read through all this !!

 

[shavo]

Hey Sparau, you got a very very good deal there! looks really nice. a nice amount of stuff for the buck eh?

I don't know the answer to your natural sea water question but I would question the cleanliness of the water. Boats, sewage, whatever, may not be as clean as you think. I know what Jersey is like and it is almost not swimmable let alone reef water.

As far as your nitrate reactor, If your not going to use it on the system I would clean it out completely, I had one I took off my system and stored in the basement and a few months later I sold here, I went to clean it out and it was the worst smelling thing ever. And after it was packed in a box and taped up and it was still horrible. I was laughing all the way to the post office about how somebody bought this and what they would think when they opened up the box after being shipped. If it has sulfur in it it is going to turn rank!

but congrats on the new system it looks cool. start a build thread so we can follow your progress

good luck!

 

[PezJunkie]

3: A couple of the power heads are missing the little hose and ball from near the outlet, will this matter? What does it do anyway?

Usually, if there's a hose attached to the output it is there to allow the powerhead to mix air into the water that is being sprayed out. So instead of just water, it pumps out air and bubbles. It's mostly useless (especially for saltwater) and I assume ~99% of people don't use it. There's usually some kind of plug you can use to cap the hole if you're not going to use the air tube.

 

[shavo]

I would pull off the air tubes, as Pez Junkie said it is for air mixture into the water, I just simply took mine off without plugging any holes.

it should be fine!

 

[mr_X]

that sump will work for macroalgae, but if you put it on the intake side, i would suggest a filter sock to stop the bubbles. if you put the macros on the other side, you'll need to sort of cage around the return pump so it doesn't suck up the macros.
awesome deal by the way!
yep...trash those tubes sticking out of the powerheads, and wash out the reactor and use it for phosban/carbon :wink:

 

[sparau]

thx guys - well i washed out the nitrate reactor (ewww) and unlike shavo's, it doesnt stink any more

couple of more questions:

1: The main return line from the sump to the display has a tiny little hose coming out of it, i was trying to work out what was meant to go in there?

As far as i figure it cant be the top up - as the line will be pressurized from the return pump and the top up pump is very low pressure and in fact i would guess the lowish pressure that comes out of the nitrate reactor means it couldnt be that feeding into the return line either.

Was it to give a bit of extra flow INTO the nitrate reactor which would then output to the sump ?

2: thx for the suggestion of using it for the AC and phosban - upon looking into it some people were saying to use then sparingly - like every few months for a couple of days.

But i cant see how they could hurt? The posts i found didnt give any explanations as to why not to use them all the time, since they are only filtering out harmful stuff.

Also - i would imaging that anything you let sit stagnant is a danger to the aquarium, so would require complete cleaning and re-stocking each time it was used.

Lastly since the reactor puts out very little water - to have it running for a couple of days would be nonsensical - it would be lucky to go through 5% of the water in a couple of days...

 

[mr_X]

you can run the reactor for more than a couple days, and yes, if you just let it sit, in no time at all it will stink like the depts of hell.
i don't see a problem with running it full time if you wish, but remember, it's going to get loaded with detritous, so you'll need to clean it out pretty frequently.
also, if the reactor will only filter 5% of the tank water in a couple days, i would think it's too small for your tank.
i'm not sure what that extra line is.....could be to feed something else, but what uses a "tiny little hose"? how small is it, like airline tubing?

 

[sparau]

a picture tells a thousand words - so here it is

It is the same size as the hoses on the inlet and outlet of the nitrate reactor and also the same size as the output from the peristaltic top up pump.

Its misleading how much water that nitrate reactor puts out, its such a little hose and runs out fairly slowly - i checked how long it took to till a 2l container - about 5 minutes - so ~4gal / hour or roughly my tank in a day !! So it should be a good size i guess. In which case filling it with a fresh load of phosban and AC and running it for a couple of days would be all it needs.