Cali Kid Corals

Maureen's Classroom DSA 105

Issues with little overflow in lowboy tank:
1) Little overflow box came unstuck from wall. Generally stays attached anyway, but sometimes falls off. Tank is fully running, so how can I reattach it to the wall? Can drain water level down for a bit but not all the way. (Overflow goes to external skimmer pump, through skimmer, then back into tank - no sump.)
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2) I used to have floss in the box that did a great job capturing a lot of detritus that accumulates in this tank - until my skimmer was acting weird. I thought it was the water level inside the skimmer, but it was a blockage of floss being pulled into the plumbing. I was lucky the floss did not get all the way into the pump. Did a water change/detritus removal today and caught a ton of detritus by clamping floss to the tank wall in the overflow box, but when I leave I cannot trust it will not go into the plumbing, so I removed it. Think I could add a rigid plastic screen in front of the overflow hole to keep out the floss?
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Srt4eric said:
What lights do you have over that frag tank?
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Nicrew LED from Amazon - don't remember wattage, but not high. Considering more or changing height after testing PAR. Waiting for time to resolve longterm problem of Apex not connecting to Fusion on our big tank, so I can measure PAR on all tanks at once. (note: It is not a delay on the part of Neptune cust serv, but me.) So dim compared to yours, right?!
 
Could possibly clamp the overflow box onto the side since you can't really silicone a wet glass tank. Won't be pretty but would be an ok short term fix. I tried searching for magnetic boxes but couldn't find one that would work here.

The other option would be draining slightly then putting on one of those eclipse overflow boxes that might fit. Others probably have more experience with these however.
 
Darkxerox said:
The other option would be draining slightly then putting on one of those eclipse overflow boxes that might fit. Others probably have more experience with these however.
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This is what I would do. Find which eclipse box fits that bulkhead then drain to just below it and install.
 
Thank you for the suggestions. Since the tank is not too full yet, I could drain and silicone it properly, but I have a lot of tank stuff to get done before school starts (and home projects), so that's a long cure time and alternate frag placement. Think I may try the super glue idea.
Overflow box is a great idea but there is a space constraint and aside from our biggest tank I am staying away from sumps to keep things simple and water contained.
Thanks for the input!
 
Cbruno80 said:
When your ready for some frags come by we would love to donate to you
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Thank you Cos! I know you offered last spring but I was just trying to make it through the school year. It would be cool to add some new frags once my new classes start and assign them to students to photograph, sketch and document throughout the year. A day of coral lessons in my non-marine science classes this year would help students get more attached to the tanks and feel protective of their little frag buddies.
 
Whelp, I have realized I have no idea how to run a barebottom tank - lowboy frag tank. Lightweight algae and detritus galore. Draining down and heavily supergluing the internal overflow box seems to have worked perfectly and I currently have floss clamped to the tank wall to mechanically filter out a lot of the random algae and gunk. It is totally working. I had mesh bags of marinepure-type media that had blobs of what I assume is bacteria on them. Eeeew. Dumped out and rinsed the balls, which are now sitting free in the tank while I clean the bags. Decided to do an extreme tank storm yesterday to suspend the detritus and get it into the floss. Rinsed and changed the floss four times since yesterday. Also did a good skimmer cleaning due to the unleashed nastiness. The frags had been looking fine, but I hope tomorrow it will be even better, with a PWC to come. So do people with barebottom tanks constantly vacuum detritus? Here is a view of the storm, which my students love.
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I think those reef abalone posted in that other thread are pretty good for this kind of tank since they hoover up pretty much most of the algae in there. Otherwise maybe creating a gyre type of flow and then just vacuuming the spots where it collects really is the easiest way to go. Remember that pretty much all would have gone into a sand bed before so you're doing fine!
 
Continuing the current state of tanks for the record, here are copepod and brine shrimp/phyto habitats that have been going since school closure in March 2020. Yep, they look bad and there is an abundance of mulm in the bottom of the tanks but it is pretty amazing how they have survived. A plethora of plankton plans are in the works...
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Darkxerox said:
I think those reef abalone posted in that other thread are pretty good for this kind of tank since they hoover up pretty much most of the algae in there. Otherwise maybe creating a gyre type of flow and then just vacuuming the spots where it collects really is the easiest way to go. Remember that pretty much all would have gone into a sand bed before so you're doing fine!
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Eeek. The 7-year-old sandbed in our big tank is always in the back of my mind... Thanks for the abalone suggestion.
 
Moving on to former frag tank which is now mainly a cleaner shrimp, crab, algae and foraminiferan habitat. Decided to skip sea hare, peroxide dip, etc., and just restart. Still deciding if it will be a certain biotope, shrimp and softies tank, specialized inverts, or bonzai reef. I love the proportions of this tank. Once the QT frags move out, frags from this mess will go there. Despite how bad it looks, there is a ton of interesting life in there including some frags from our big tank corals that I love, but they may have pests so are not going into the lowboy.
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Current status of our former clownfish-anemone tank. It will be nice to be able to look back as the school year progresses to see where we started. In this tank I would like to look into increasing the little return pump to see if I can ditch the in-tank powerheads to increase safety for anemones.
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MolaMola said:
Continuing the current state of tanks for the record, here are copepod and brine shrimp/phyto habitats that have been going since school closure in March 2020. Yep, they look bad and there is an abundance of mulm in the bottom of the tanks but it is pretty amazing how they have survived. A plethora of plankton plans are in the works...
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Love this! Glad to see others set ups! My copepod production hasn’t been the best the last culture.. Hoping to fix that issue!
 
Here is our big tank. I think overfeeding is causing some green slimy algae and bit of macroalgae to grow. Adding a long handled plastic scraper into the maintenance toolbox bc the algae magnet cannot reach everywhere. Sometime I will get some shots of corals and inverts I love. This tank has a lot of interesting life.
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