Mojoreef's Water Treatment Methods

[mojoreef]

LOL Alberto, better keep my hat on. The water change is a pretty easy one to break down. If you have pollution in your tank and cant process it out then water changes are the way to go for sure. On elemental replenichement it is also a viable source for do it. For me and my system I dont have the pollution that would require me to do water changes. On elements ASW mixes are pretty much bottom of the barrel in regards to the level of quality and pureness, they do come with alot of added components I just would rather not have, so I do it another way.

Good post big A

Mike

 

[Scooterman]

Mike, do you make your own salt?
How did you initally make or get your Salt Water?

 

[dgasmd]

Wow wow wow Let me stop you right there buddy. Who are you calling "big" My valerina figure is now not good enough for you LOL.........

Give me time and maybe I'll come to the dark side with you.

What in particular do you use for other element supplementation? I typicly don't add anything that does not come out of the kalk or Ca reactor (use crush coral!). It has worked great so far too. Then again, I don't measure I, Mg, or anything else for that matter so I wouldn't know if they were low.

Alberto
PS: call me Alberto. Al used to be my wife's ex-boyfriend........

 

[mojoreef]

Good lord Alberto with that kind of body flow who needs any pumps

I am pretty much the same as you I use the kalk and reactor for the majority of replenishment. the only other product I dose on occasion is this one here . Becareful on the CCas a media, it will work fine and give you the same ammount elements as higher priced medias, but the only problem is that is has alot of snail shells, these shells are loaded with phosphates.

take care bro.

Mike

 

[dgasmd]

Thanks for the link Mike. I will check in to it. How much per gallon is the recommended dosage and how often? If I try it out, I want to know which container size to get.:smirk:

 

[mojoreef]

Mark sorry i missed your question. I do not make my own salt, I just add a bit of Sodium chloride when needed. The original water came from the prestine waters of Puget sound, not the best source by any means, but I treated it and bumped up the levels to NSW manually.

Mike

 

[mojoreef]

Alberto I just go by the directions for dosage but only do it every 3 to 4 months so dont get the bigger sizes. These trace elements make up a very small ammount of the make up of the water, and to be honest with most of them we dont even know if they play a role or not. Fr m I do it as a better safe then sorry type of thing


Mike

 

[Maxx]

This has been a fascinating thread...I'm definately enjoying it.
Alberto, that is the sickest thing I've ever seen. I love it!
Mike,
How would someone with a smaller system go about replicating your set up? Do you feel that the massive flow and massive skimming is the majority of your success? Or in your opinion, is Ozone and UV equally important for someone wanting to follow in your footsteps, albeit slightly smaller...say 58 gallons or so?
Nick

 

[Cougra]

Mike:

When you do topoffs how do you treat that water?


PS: Love this thread! lol wonder how much we can make Mike type

 

[mojoreef]

Nick I dont see why things couldnt just be scaled down for any size tank. Some of the stuff I have is a little pricy but cheaper alturnatives are available. On the waterflow its all about the concept and not so much about the means. You want to remove the detritus /food and waste prior to it having to break down, if and when you do this you dont have to worry so much about nitrification/denitrification and a whole lots of other things, you simple remove it prior to it becoming a problem, this well help you in simplifing things and not having the need to have so many checks in your system (remember the house of cards, hehe).
My skimmer is big because it needs to process a lot of water, if you dont have as much water to process then just scale it down to your tank, but keep in mind that the skimmer is a very important part of your exportation, so make it a good one. The same would apply to a uv. its is not an absolutly needed item, but just one more thing to help you achieve the ultimate goal = great nutrient free water quality.
On the Ozone, to be honest the stuff scares the heck out of me. I do know alot of folks that use it very sucessfully and for alot of years. the use of Ozone is what we call active filtration (skimming would be passive) basically you are releasing a nasty little tazmanian molecule that goes out and activly seeks out stuff to kill, and it really will kill anything it comes in contact with (living or dead) so it can be used but I would suggest many controls be put in place to keep it honest.
Maybe Alberto could shed a little more light on it for us.

Michelle I know you love making me work, but I tell you after the 537 emails from the TOTM thing my one finger typing is getting real quick, lol
Ok on the top off. I have my ro/di unit plumbed right into the tank via a kent float valve. But not much actually goes in. I dose about 7 to 10 gallons a day of kalk so the majority of the toppoff is supplied that way.

Mike

 

[Flatlander]

Sheez Alberto, where did you get that pic of me. :LOL:

Mike, I am doing somewhat of a mini version of yours. I just ordered my new tank. Its 30in.L--24in.W--24in.H. Only high flow sps and my 3 small maxima clams. There will be a lot of Fiji rock and only rubble pieces on the bottom. There will be a fake overflow, but no drain and no sump.

Lighting will come from my 400w pulse start/Radium pendant. Now for the likeness to yours. It will have tons of current generated by my two Tunze 6080 stream pumps. If anything settles in there, I will be shocked.

A modified 32in. Myreef beckett/Mak4 combo will skim it. It will take water direct from the tank, at all levels and return it into the fake overflow. I will also run a large hang on power filter, to remove floating crap. So, not counting the skimmer, their should be about 5000gph of flow in the 70g tank. :drooool:

 

[mojoreef]

Sounds like a cool tank buddy, I want to see lots of pics for sure. One thing I have found is that it doesnt really need to be alot of flow as it needs to be smart flow. You want the detritus to stay in suspention but you also want it to be able to get out of the tank. With your skimmer drawing directly from the tank it looks like you have that more then covered.

Mike

 

[Mebigloser]

Love the info so far, keep it coming.....

 

[dgasmd]

Mike:

As far as the ozone, it is pretty simple actually. The key, like with everything else, is not to over do it. I don't have personal experience with it, but know a couple of people that use it in smaller amounts daily and it works wonders for them. Calfo has a pretty good section on it in his book of coral propagation. I probably sound like a broken record here, but when I redo my system I may be adding a smaller unit to it. Certainly undersized and with the aid of a ORP controller. For what I ahve heard from others, a controller is really not needed if you undersize the unit, but it is a nice failsafe.

Alberto

 

[ste]

nice setup mojo i wish my other half would let me go that big with my setup but reading this thread and about your setup has inspired me to rethink the setup on my system

 

[sharks]

Thanks for the reply and answers to a few questions I was wondering about.
Another great thread gang

 

[tankgirl]

Mike, I'm sorry about the sore typing finger! We're all getting so much out of this thread, tho', I appreciate your efforts so much!!! Your explanations are great - I understood all the plumbing, so far!!!

One thing I've always wondered about spray bars - wouldn't the pressure at one end be more than at the other end? How big is your spray bar and how big are the holes in it, please?

Also, you mentioned a particulate filter bag that you run a couple days a week - where is that in your system?

Wow - I can't believe you can just dial in water speed.
----
Alberto, Thanks so much!!! That was the clearest and best description of where and how pods and bacteria exist in a tank I've Ever seen!!! And your dancing man was great!!!

 

[nivek]

mojoreef = Lord Of The Reef

 

[NaH2O]

Could you run the 5 micron filter sock all the time? If you cleaned it out once a week? I understand that it might clog up quickly, but if you made it a part of the weekly cleaning maintenance?

 

[mojoreef]

TG my spray bar is aout 15 feet long. you do loose a little pressure as the bar goes along, but remember you are only drilling small holes so the flow carries on as each hole has a max it can let out. What I did was to not put so many holes at the begining, then more as you go.

For the filter, if you look at the bottom right corner of the pic, you can see the drain lines coming into the sump. Att acttached to the drainline on the inside of the sump is an bag adapter (looks like a small frizbie) that screw right onto the drain line. The bag just slips overtop of that.
here is the pic

here is the adapter

and here is the bagbag


Mike