Jestersix

MD’s 50 Gallon Low Boy

MarcosDelgado0 said:
Anybody know if a refugium is a good idea on a frag tank? Or should I use that area for rock since there won’t be any if the display? Or biomedia instead of rock?
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You could also use the ceramic bricks for a section of the sump they are extremely pourose. Don't take this as any type of expert or first hand recommendation by any means. I watched several videos compairng different types of media for the sump. Many claimed the bio bricks once seeded and well established can house more bacteria than standard rocks. That's what a fair amount of the videos suggested a few others said they were expensive and possibly over rated. I saw some i would have liked to try but to they were to expensive for my budget, so went with cheaper ones. My 65 my plan is to do both. The fuge depends on how my acrylic diy project works.

This link is to a guy testing various ones out. I’ve seen countless videos on various type. So just one of the more compartive ones I recalled.


Pictured below are the cheap ones I bought from Amazon. I haven't added them to the new tank yet, pending until I attempt sump mod. I've been soaking them for 3 months in my main tank. So I
have no real personal opinion on them until later down the road when i can see their effect good or bad..
 

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MichaelB said:
You could also use the ceramic bricks for a section of the sump they are extremely pourose. Don't take this as any type of expert or first hand recommendation by any means. I watched several videos compairng different types of media for the sump. Many claimed the bio bricks once seeded and well established can house more bacteria than standard rocks. That's what a fair amount of the videos suggested a few others said they were expensive and possibly over rated. I saw some i would have liked to try but to they were to expensive for my budget, so went with cheaper ones. My 65 my plan is to do both. The fuge depends on how my acrylic diy project works.

This link is to a guy testing various ones out. I’ve seen countless videos on various type. So just one of the more compartive ones I recalled.


Pictured below are the cheap ones I bought from Amazon. I haven't added them to the new tank yet, pending until I attempt sump mod. I've been soaking them for 3 months in my main tank. So I
have no real personal opinion on them until later down the road when i can see their effect good or bad..
Click to expand...
Thanks for the rec I’ll look into that! I actually have a box of those cheap ones. I wanted to soak them in my tank but they didn’t really fit well in the AIO chamber and I didn’t really want them in the display tank since retail in there is scarce as it is :(
 
MarcosDelgado0 said:
Thanks for the rec I’ll look into that! I actually have a box of those cheap ones. I wanted to soak them in my tank but they didn’t really fit well in the AIO chamber and I didn’t really want them in the display tank since retail in there is scarce as it is :(
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Understandable they aren't something you wanna look at daily. They fit almost exact in rear of my biocube, I did have to double check the measurements thou.
 
Personally, I think I'd stay away from a refugium. After seeing my nutrients bottom out so quickly without a refugium, because I've got so much rock in there, I'd be worried. I wonder where all that rock came from?! Hmmm

But I will need to find the link to "study" about various porous materials and their efficacy in filtration. Let's just say that a lot of those products out there for biomedia can be smoke and mirrors. I think it's tough to beat natural crushed coral (larger reactor media) for bacteria. Neptunes recently got a big shipment in.

And it's really hard to beat the K1 media! Enough surface area for bacteria to colonize and detritus doesn't get built up in it, making it easy to clean out. Gotta run, but if forget to get you the link to it, remind me.
 
ReyDeFarts said:
Personally, I think I'd stay away from a refugium. After seeing my nutrients bottom out so quickly without a refugium, because I've got so much rock in there, I'd be worried. I wonder where all that rock came from?! Hmmm

But I will need to find the link to "study" about various porous materials and their efficacy in filtration. Let's just say that a lot of those products out there for biomedia can be smoke and mirrors. I think it's tough to beat natural crushed coral (larger reactor media) for bacteria. Neptunes recently got a big shipment in.

And it's really hard to beat the K1 media! Enough surface area for bacteria to colonize and detritus doesn't get built up in it, making it easy to clean out. Gotta run, but if forget to get you the link to it, remind me.
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Thanks Andy. That was definitely one of my thoughts too regarding the nutrients. I have to look into some of the bio media @MichaelB mentioned. I saw the description on Brightwells Xport BIO Brick claims to support up to 1000 gallons. Seems like a crazy claim but would be awesome if true because it’ll make things neater in the sump. I do see some reviews where people say they “melted”.
 
H2OPlayar said:
@MichaelB should have some extra crushed coral from my old system.

The bricks will "melt" or disintegrate over time, crushed coral doesn't
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Yes bleached the first half and have it dryjng out. I have the 2nd batch in a bleach soak now. Will need to soak it in a clorine remover for a few days next week. Should have it all good as new in another 2 weeks I estimate.

It's definitely been a heck of a job lmao. I will glady share some. It was stored outside on the ground so lots of debris, organics, and sand mixed in it. So going through all the steps to ensure it's clean and won't have any leeching phosphates down the road.

Definitely greatful @H2OPlayar for this. At $6.49 a lbs this would have had to be well over $300 saved

I ended up with just under 2 5 gallon buckets of it. After sorting it out.
 
H2OPlayar said:
@MichaelB should have some extra crushed coral from my old system.

The bricks will "melt" or disintegrate over time, crushed coral doesn't
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Marine Pure and seachem blocks have been know to leach aluminum in tanks as well, would recommend not using them if you can avoid it (especially no name Amazon brands too). Whether that's a problem or not is up to you. Not sure if anyone has confirmed if the polyplab blocks are better but it would be cool to see.
 
Darkxerox said:
Marine Pure and seachem blocks have been know to leach aluminum in tanks as well, would recommend not using them if you can avoid it (especially no name Amazon brands too). Whether that's a problem or not is up to you. Not sure if anyone has confirmed if the polyplab blocks are better but it would be cool to see.
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I didn't know it was a possibility, I will definitely dig deeper on the subject. Thanks for the heads up.
 
A lot of well known coral farmers specifically avoid excessive porous material and even minimize live rock in their systems. Bacteria consume oxygen and this puts downward pressure on PH. I think this fact is often overlooked - consider what happens with bacterial blooms. Obviously bacteria are important, but I think in some cases having too much can cause problems too.

Perhaps adding media to help balance the system once it’s up and running and you have a sense of the feeding and livestock and nitrate levels and such might help. But you don’t have any of that information yet, so adding media at the very start just because seems like a bad idea. Just IMHO

In fact my last tank, which had nothing but issues, was started with a ton of media in the sump. Always struggled with PH and a host of other mystery issues I ultimately blamed on the bacterial biome. Eventually Dino’s. Awful tank from start to finish.

My latest tank is much more successful, and while there are a few other differences, this has been a key one IMO.
 
@derek_SR Brings up a great point @MarcosDelgado0 !

Don't start off with a too much, too soon. I never really thought of what he said, in that way. Being that it will be a frag tank. You really only need the essentials to keep them happy, right. Shoot, the frag plugs may be enough surface area initially for all the bacteria the system needs. As you get dialed in, you can slowly add more biological filtration.

My 50 was started with A LOT of live rock from you. And looking back, it was a huge biological load for a brand new tank. It was great. No real ugly stage really. But at the slightest decrease in feeding, the nutrients would plummet. Also, the pH was a constant struggle. I didn't attribute that to the biological load of the O² honestly. Definitely a perspective to seriously consider!
 
I haven’t updated this thread in a while. I’ve been super busy lately.

Tank is still empty. My plan is to either DIY some frag racks with egg crate and 3D printed legs or I might just buy some. I saw some frag racks that Luna Reef makes that look cool and I’ve been eyeing.

I ended up just using a spare 5 gallon jug I got from Neptune Aquatics and used that as my ATO reservoir. Cheap but functional.

I need to buy a shorter cable to connect the two Nicrew lights because currently the cord has a lot of slack and I don’t like that look.

My custom lid from Clearview Lids came in. Honestly I like it better than my Kraken Reef Lid on my old Red Sea 525. The kraken reef lid is a lot thinner and it has some bowing to it. No bowing with the Clearview lid, it feels very sturdy. I do have a Kraken Reef lid on my Red Sea Max E 170 that I like a lot but that is a smaller footprint. I couldn’t have gone with Kraken Reef anyways because they don’t do custom.

Powerheads are installed at the moment. Only have return pump running because the tank is empty.

Hopefully in the coming weeks I’m finally able to finish this build and put some corals in. After my last update I got busy and I also was waiting on the lid so that put a hold on everything
 

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Coral reefer said:
I’d go discs and tiles instead of plugs and just not use racks
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Is the benefit to that just saving money on the racks? Originally I was planning on just gluing frags to rubble but someone told me that egg crate would be better because it would allow for better flow.. not sure if that’s true or not.
 
“Better” flow. But what’s that? I guess it depends how you’re going to do it maybe.
No money to spend on stuff. No stuff to keep clean. I never saw a need for it and would do the discs and tiles on the bottom again no problem
 
I have been doing a combo of them. I generally use 3d printed frag racks I designed and can print a load of at cost (they have rubber frag plug holders). However now that I've been having success in that tank, and things are overgrowing basic frag plugs, I've been switching to bigger discs and tiles.

For some larger colonies I've been putting them directly on the bottom of the tank because it was easier and cleared more space. The only downside I found is it adds another place for detritus to build up, and is slightly exacerbated because the detritus is directly against the coral. The ones that are raised on racks obviously don't have that occur.

Both ways work. I think racks give you the option to do both (plugs and tiles) and also have a benefit of raising the coral towards the light, increasing PAR and/or meaning you can run the light at lower intensity (save $$$).
 
Coral reefer said:
“Better” flow. But what’s that? I guess it depends how you’re going to do it maybe.
No money to spend on stuff. No stuff to keep clean. I never saw a need for it and would do the discs and tiles on the bottom again no problem
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Detritus is the biggest issue I’ve found with tile directly on bare bottoms. I found it was much easier to suck up detritus when things were on racks because there was always one place where it would build up. Easy clean up with a siphon without having to worry about disturbing or breaking colonies on tiles. It also gave a place for fish to hide when the big monster (i.e., me) came around the tank. Plus egg crate lets you easily put the frags you make in the same place as the colony to maintain flow and lighting parameters.
 
RandyC said:
Detritus is the biggest issue I’ve found with tile directly on bare bottoms. I found it was much easier to suck up detritus when things were on racks because there was always one place where it would build up. Easy clean up with a siphon without having to worry about disturbing or breaking colonies on tiles. It also gave a place for fish to hide when the big monster (i.e., me) came around the tank.
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That was my thought process as well when I had decided to do racks instead of rubble. Since there won’t be any rock in the tank at least it will give them some form of shelter
 
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