Reef nutrition

Peter's Garage Tank

The madness continues! Much like the Winchester Mystery House it appears as though I'm going to keep adding on. The latest addition is a 58 gallon Oceanic that we got from @Newjack. It is a really sweet tank made of thick glass. It had a custom made sump, but I think will just plumb it into the sump that we are currently running and run the whole system on one sump. I think we have everything we need to get it up and running including overflow boxes, return pumps, powerheads, heater, and lights. The only things we should have to get is sand and rocks. If anybody has any extra rock laying around, let me know.
image.jpeg
image.jpeg
 
I would drill it if it was going in the house right now, but it is in the garage and the aesthetics are not that important. Not drilling it now gives me flexibility in the future, and I already have the CPR box and all the plumbing.
I placed an order last night for the sand, a couple wavemakers, a new Eheim heater (150 watt) and a spare Aqualifter.
Cheers!
 
Coral reefer said:
So you have cycled rock and are plumbing it to an existing system?what cycle?
Click to expand...
I guess not really a full blown cycle.The Jestersix is about 15 pounds and has never been in water and we are waiting for 40 pounds of dry sand and we still need more rock. If you pull rock out of one tank and set it up in another, dont you get a mini cycle?
Cheers!
 
It depends. It’s a big balancing act with the bacteria. It propegates when there is the food to support it. When you first start a new tank (without seeding it with live rock from another tank) and dose it with ammonia, you are giving a small amount of bacteria a large amount of food. The bacteria will continue to propagate until there’s an equilibrium between the amount of food and the amount of bacteria. That’s when the system is considered to be cycled. The problem arises when there is a spike in the food source that the established bacteria can’t keep up with. That’s why many reefers see a “mini” cycle even after their initial cycle. In your case, if the tanks were not plumbed together then you might experience a “mini” cycle because of an overwhelming amount of decaying organic material that had been built up on the piece of rock that had been transferred. In the original tank there would have been much more bacteria to handle that amount of decay but in the new tank the ratio is imbalanced. Since your tanks are plumbed together you are taking advantage of all the bacteria that has been built up in the other tank, so unless you dumped in so much food that it overwhelmed your existing tank, there won’t be any kind of cycle.
 
What a great father and son day! Peter and I got the Oceanic 58 all plumbed up, water in and turned on. We even put our first corals in. We put in an old pump and an old heater until the new ones are delivered on Friday and we're still waiting for sand but we are up and running.
image.jpeg
 
Newjack said:
i'm really glad to see the tank up and running again. What lights are you using over it?
Click to expand...
Thank You! for giving it to us. We are using a 4 bulb t5 fixture. Once we get the sand in tomorrow, we are going to start adding corals to this tank that have low light requirements.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top