High Tide Aquatics

Why I farm the way I do (warning-long!)

Jim, yanno over the years that I've known you, and everything I've heard about your growing system that is not what I imagined. It looks much better than I imagined.

Few questions:

Gyre? I know you at one time were playing around with that gyre flow, even got custom inserts (tank?) to get those sharp corners into curves, is that still in play?

Fish? Just corals in there right? Nothing for pest control (the wrasse or what not).

Lighting? You mentioned a 175w and a 250w in L3s, how many hours do you light for?

Effect? Where do all those frags go that you're growing out? Stores and what not?
 
saltwatersig said:
Jim

Thats a very impressive frag set up and I definitely see the advantage of keep frags off the frag rack surface.
Thank you very much for sharing your coral farming skills.

Sergio
Click to expand...
Thanks, and it's fun to share!
 
sfsuphysics said:
Jim, yanno over the years that I've known you, and everything I've heard about your growing system that is not what I imagined. It looks much better than I imagined.

Few questions:

Gyre? I know you at one time were playing around with that gyre flow, even got custom inserts (tank?) to get those sharp corners into curves, is that still in play?

Fish? Just corals in there right? Nothing for pest control (the wrasse or what not).

Lighting? You mentioned a 175w and a 250w in L3s, how many hours do you light for?

Effect? Where do all those frags go that you're growing out? Stores and what not?
Click to expand...
Thx Mike!
The gyre experiment was successful but as I removed the larger baffles in favor of the rod racks, I lost a bunch of the gyre effect and the flow turned more chaotic. Then Hydor sent me these groovy Korallias and a wavemaker to review and that was a good excuse to shut down the noisy closed loop pump, which was the last vestige of the gyre. The tank still has the rounded inserts in the bottom corners but they don't sweep stuff along as well as they used to.
Fish stocking list is :
2 sealii cardinals
1 green mandarin
1 thompsens tang
1 tomini tang
1 orange spotted rabbitfish
no wrasses yet.

Lighting: the 175w is on from 11 am to 10 pm or so and the 250w comes on around 1 pm and goes till roughly midnight.
So far most of the frags have gone to friends as species backup but yes, they will be in a store soon.
Sorry I'll miss you all at the swap. Gotta work again. OY! LOL
 
soooo I guess no follow up article is going to happen :lol: Just busting :) great post!
 
Thanks Gresham! I do plan to write this up for the mag but this thread was just the result of making the morning coffee too strong yesterday.
 
sid700 said:
I don't see any coralline on the acrylic. Is it just hard to see?
Click to expand...
There is almost no microalgae of any type in my system. The combo of a few asterina stars and a serious qty of blk foot trochus have eaten everything that even looks like microalgae! Good thing too cause I use the space under the racks to grow LPS and they depend on the snails keeping their 'skylights' clean.
 
A_Lee said:
Maybe I missed; but how many frags do you currently have in that system Jim?
Beautiful set-up!
Click to expand...
Thanks! I currently have only a few hundred frags but the shop will initially have a holding capacity of around 12k frags.
 
bookfish said:
sid700 said:
I don't see any coralline on the acrylic. Is it just hard to see?
Click to expand...
There is almost no microalgae of any type in my system. The combo of a few asterina stars and a serious qty of blk foot trochus have eaten everything that even looks like microalgae! Good thing too cause I use the space under the racks to grow LPS and they depend on the snails keeping their 'skylights' clean.
Click to expand...

Probably a bit low in MG ;)
 
Very interesting Jim--I've heard a lot about your set up.

Couple of Questions:

1. What do you do for calcium supplementation (I assume calcium reactor).
2. Do you supplement anything else such as Magnesium
3. 11 hours of lighting? I've heard that is a little long. Do you have experience running your lights for shorter periods of time?
4. Do you culture your own live rotifers?

I totally agree with you about changing the halide bulbs. I see a noticable change in the color of the light the bulbs emit (and hence the color of the coral) after 10 months.
 
patrickb said:
Very interesting Jim--I've heard a lot about your set up.

Couple of Questions:

1. What do you do for calcium supplementation (I assume calcium reactor).
2. Do you supplement anything else such as Magnesium
3. 11 hours of lighting? I've heard that is a little long. Do you have experience running your lights for shorter periods of time?
4. Do you culture your own live rotifers?

I totally agree with you about changing the halide bulbs. I see a noticable change in the color of the light the bulbs emit (and hence the color of the coral) after 10 months.
Click to expand...
Hi Patrick, I've relied exclusively on water changes for quite a while to keep things going good. I haven't tested the tank in over a year so I have no idea where my parameters are but as I pack in more and more sps frags, I'll be starting to test for CA and Mg. Currently I don't dose or supplement anything but a CA reactor is a real possibility for the future.
I used to run my lights for 9-10 hours but I didn't get enough coral viewing time after work so I slowly brought it up over time. If I'd seen any negative effects I was prepared to cut it back but so far all is good.
And, while I have cultured live rotis in the past, I don't at the moment. I'd say unless someone has a huge need for live rotis (like fish breeding) it's a much better deal to just buy the Reef Nutrition product.
 
Very cool setup Jim!

How do you keep the rods from sliding down the holes in the frag rack? Do they go all the way to the bottom of the tank?
 
alve said:
Very cool setup Jim!

How do you keep the rods from sliding down the holes in the frag rack? Do they go all the way to the bottom of the tank?
Click to expand...

look to the base of the plugs in this pictur:

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t210/fishbucket_2007/samplepicsmag233.jpg

Not to speak for Jim but RO tubing, airline tubing, etc all work great to hold it up. You just cut a little piece and use that.
 
GreshamH said:
alve said:
Very cool setup Jim!

How do you keep the rods from sliding down the holes in the frag rack? Do they go all the way to the bottom of the tank?
Click to expand...

look to the base of the plugs in this pictur:

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t210/fishbucket_2007/samplepicsmag233.jpg

Not to speak for Jim but RO tubing, airline tubing, etc all work great to hold it up. You just cut a little piece and use that.
Click to expand...
 
Yup Gresham is right. But it's def easier to slide the collars on if they're wet, warm or preferably both. Also, it turns out not all airline is the same thickness so you may have to try different brands. I reuse my old airline tubing to make the collars. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...in that order.
And why would I get mad? It's not like you left me at some airport for 6 hours or something! LOL!
(insert smilie here)
 
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