Sorry, i have not been here for a while but i will from now on. I was away in New orleans helping out, then recently to Texas to help them out with the wildfire situations over there. Since last i wrote, i have learned a lot about my reef. things went down hill at one piont but now it is doing great. To give you an idea of some of the bad things that happened: I got a hippo tang that got stressed and got a disease, like an idiot i paniced and put an antibiotic in the tank thus killing my LSB. Second, my home made setup did not workout well and my reef collected a lot of detritus. NOW! - after much trial and error, and lots of brain cells lost from thinking and studying so hard i finally i finally got it! I took time off from work and just dedicated my time to my reef. I redesigned my overflow, my protien skimmer, my sump, and created a raised platform that suspends my live rock reef a half inch to an inch over my LSB.
currents now flow across my LSB - no more dead spots. I built two countercurrent protien skimmers and two venturi driven. all produced foam by-product but i was not satisfied with there consistency. The end result is a see-thru countercurrent protien skimmer with a 43 and a half inch reaction chamber - works great! now i just need to re-seed by LSB.
I have many questions for other aquarists.
