Reef nutrition

QOTD: What reefing thing do you really wish you'd known?

IOnceWasLegend

IOnceWasLegend

Frag Swap Coordinator
BOD
BARcard
They say experience is the worst teacher, because it only tells you what you need *after* you need to know it. So, along those lines: what reefkeeping tidbit do you wish you'd known *before* it became relevant?

A few of mine:

1. If you're running a herbie overflow, just get the gate valve. You will be very thankful.

2. When putting together a sump, make sure you know how high the water level will be if the return pump fails.

3. Corollary to #2: if you have an ATO on the sump, make sure you put your ATO line *above* this line.
 
Coral reefer said:
And even then, you still need to qt to do it right.
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Yeah after I moved to SF I dipped everything I brought and put it in a 10 gal holding tank, then observed for a few days and all the frags appeared clean, I dipped them and put them in my new tank, and then I saw an aiptasia growing on my new rock a few weeks later.

When I have the space I think I would do a coral qt to attempt to avoid pests in a main display. Or I need to do a more aggressive dip And pull out the magnifying glass like meshmez
 
On my first tank:
  1. Design rock work so that it doesn't constantly fall over and so that there are no dead spots wrt flow.
  2. A tank that has a lot of lineal overflow and bigger holes for bulkheads
  3. Avoid top with small openings and avoid acrylic altogether
  4. 30" is just too deep to reach the bottom (It looks good though)
Having learned from the first tank, I was able to avoid the above when I rebuilt my 300g...except...
  1. 30" is just too deep
 
max_nano said:
what was the issue you had with ones that were too small? limiting sump turn over? What size did you end up doing for the 300?
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Exactly. I had two corner overflows with 1" hole each. So, ended up with a Durso overflow in each which is really limiting. I now have two Synergy ghost overflows with three 1 1/2" holes each. I have one overflow draining into the other one and then one BeanAnimal overflow.
 
Wlachnit said:
On my first tank:
  1. Design rock work so that it doesn't constantly fall over and so that there are no dead spots wrt flow.
  2. A tank that has a lot of lineal overflow and bigger holes for bulkheads
  3. Avoid top with small openings and avoid acrylic altogether
  4. 30" is just too deep to reach the bottom (It looks good though)
Having learned from the first tank, I was able to avoid the above when I rebuilt my 300g...except...
  1. 30" is just too deep
Click to expand...

More specifically:
1. Decide if you are or are not ok with getting your armpits wet.
1b. Don't buy a tank you can't comfortably touch the bottom of, and better yet touch the bottom at the back corners. Yes, this means people with long arms can have taller tanks.

I spent some time working on a tank (not mine) that was not only had little space between the lighting and the eurobrace, but I had to put my face about 6" underwater to touch the bottom. The work I was doing (power tools) was not well suited to tongs, so I had to wear googles and an upside down snorkel. Not fun.

My large tank I can JUST touch the bottom if I'm willing to roll my sleeve up, and I'm willing to do it for the extra height, but I'm definitely weighing making the sand an inch thicker so it's easier to reach things.
 
Hasn't caused me issues, but when buying a new custom tank, 5 holes minimum (3 drains, 2 returns), and size your returns like you size your drains. This whole "the pump can push the water harder than gravity pulls it" thing might be true, but there's a direct impact to your electric bill.
 
Test failure scenarios. What happens if your skimmer fails? Your return pump? Power outage? Have backups to make sure that single point failures don't kill your tank!

For me, what stung me twice was (I think) air exchange. In one case a return pump and there was not enough surface water movement in the display tank and by the time we noticed in the morning ... all my fish had asphixiated. In another case, I had one skimmer (sumpless quarantine tank) providing air to the tank with one mid depth pump. When the skimmer was accidentally unplugged, the same thing happened (I think) and the two fish were dead at the bottom before we noticed. In both those cases, I believe that simply running something like a maxijet near the surface would have kept the fish alive. Both tanks had B11 air pumps which kick in when the power dies, but that was not the case here, it was pump failure which they could not detect.

You can detect return pump failure by mounting a water sensor in your sump at a level that the water would only reach if the return pump fails. I think the B11s are absolutely necessary. They can run 8 hours on two D batteries. They are simply air pumps that trigger when they sense power loss at the plugs.

V
 
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