need new lights

M

MATRIXINC

New Member
Hi there kinda new here and want to thank everyone for being so helpful with my early questions. Let me tell you about the second hand tank I purchased:
Environment and Equipment

110 Gal tank
2 inch CC bottom
Lots of rock none live yet
350 mag canister filled with charcoal and mechanical filter
Fluval 440 filled with Ammonia absorber, charcoal, bio-media
Dual Bak Pak protein skimmer with bio media
Two power heads not sure of the size
Lots of air bubbles
I 4-5 inch yellow tang, 2 blue dams, 2 zebra dams, one hermit crab, one shrimp, one domino.
Lights are simple fluorescent 2 units with 2 tubes each

The tank is about 6-7 weeks old now and some of the fish came with it. It has gone thru its settling period and seems very stable now. All tests are in the good range.
My question is, do I have too much filter stuff on there? I'm affraid to look at my electric bill when it get here!
also what is this supm/refu thing i keep reading about? Do I need one of those.
In the future I plan to add some live rock and maybe some inverts...not thinking of coral yet.
 
Maxx

Maxx

Well-Known Member
Matrix,
If you're not thinking corals you're okay. Long story short, the filtration you have is adequate for a FO, (Fish Only) or a FOWLR, (Fish Only With Live Rock). Fish are tougher than corals and anemones and can handle the higher levels of nitrate which will be generated by your cannister filters and bio-media in your skimmer. If you know about the nitrogen cycle than this will make sense, if not...I've probably just confused the snot out of you, but thats okay, cause we can fix that. If you're just keeping fish, you wont really need new lights as nothing in it is photosynthetic. The sump/refugium thing that is being mentioned is pretty easy to describe.
A sump basically adds water volume to the system. It can be any type of container, it just has to hold water. The idea is to add water volume which will add stability. If you add a 50 gallon sump to your system, you will now have a 160 gallon set up. This will take longer to change temperatures, and longer to polutte from fish waste etc....make sense? A sump is also used to hold anything that detracts from the tanks aesthetic appeal...heaters, skimmers, filters etc.....this way the tank looks "cleaner" meaning no other stuff cluttering up the background. A refugium is essentially a sump or part of a sump which provides a "refuge" for smaller critters that would ordinarily be preyed up in the main tank...primarily small crustaceans known as 'pods for short...amphipods, copepods, etc....live fish food. Many people have turned the refugium into a place to hold macro algae as means to "export" nutrients like nitrate, (algae fertilizer...no nitrate..no nuisance algae) some phosphates etc....the macro algae takes the nutients up, (also provides a home for pods), gets pruned back, and thrown away...voila...nutrients have been "exported".
Hope this helps...
Nick
 
Brucey

Brucey

Well-Known Member
Matrix ... Sounds like you've got hold of a nice system and nick has given you good advice. A sump is Def the way to go, adding extra volume, getting equipment such as heaters out of sight, allowing pods and larvae to grow without predatation and allows you to grow macro algae's for nutrient export etc
Brucey
 
wooddood

wooddood

the wood dude
listen to maxx he's a wealth of knowledge and will keep you on the right path.i really cant add to his post he pretty much covered all the bases.karma to ya nick.
 
Cougra

Cougra

Well-Known Member
The single best improvement I made to my system was adding a sump. It's amazing how much it made a difference in maintaining the tank.

Also, if your rock has been in the tank for about 6-7 weeks now, it's alive in the most basic sence of the usage of live rock. The primary definition of live rock is that it contains all the bacteria required for biological filtration. (one of the features I like the most about the sump is that all the evaporation shows up in the sump and not in the main tank so the water level is always constant!)

The extended definition of live rock is that it has coraline algae, little bugs like pods and worms and possibly some marco alga on it as well.

You can take any rock and add it to your tank and it will eventually become live once the bacteria cover it.

If you want some bug life in the rock I would suggest buying a couple pounds of cured rock from a LFS and just adding it to the main tank. This should introduce some critters to your tank and they will multiply and populate your tank.
 
M

MATRIXINC

New Member
Ok, well thank you alll for your advise. But.....where can I get information on designing this sump. Like how do I move the water from the sump to the main tank? How do you control the heat in a 110 gallon tank by heating the water in an ajacent 50 gallon tank? Do you move the water between the two tanks that quickly?
Thanks
Jim
 
addict

addict

Well-Known Member
In a tank with a sump, the water drains from the tank by gravity, either through a bulkhead, or an overflow box with a siphon tube, and it's returned to the display via a return pump.
You should shoot for 4x-6x tank volume circulating through the sump. A Mag7 (700gph... about 500gph with a 4' head) would work as a return pump, depending on how much head pressure you're pumping against (the height of the tank above the sump).
The water doesn't really need to move that quickly, since slower water will pick up more heat from the heater before returning to the tank... To make the heater more efficient in the sump, it's best to have it in the last chamber right before before the water is pumped back into the tank. The main thing to remember is that water absorbs heat slowly, and releases it slowly, so you don't lose much heat while heating it in the sump and pumping the heated water back into the main tank.

You can find information on sumps pretty much anywhere, and there's no 'tried-and-true' method to their construction... some people use fish tanks, some use rubbermaid tubs, some use custom acrylic sumps, and (like me), some use plywood covered in epoxy paint.
If you check out my 'my journey...' thread in general reef discussion, I have a schematic (top down) on the first page of what my sump will look like, and that may give you some ideas. The main thing is to give yourself enough room to catch all the water that drains down from the tank during a power outage... all other considerations are completely up to you (baffles, refugium, etc.)

HTH.
And welcome to the addiction we call reef keeping. :D
 
wooddood

wooddood

the wood dude
very good dave karma to you too bud great job.you covered the bases very well too.i just want to add that i've always went with a 10 x's turn over rate,meaning with a 100 gal tank your return pump should move 1000 gals per hour including head pressure so you would probally need a pump in the 1200gph range to acheave a 10 x's turn over rate.on my 120 i run a rio 32 hf [hyperflow] and it's rated at 1500 gal per hour at a 4 ft head.buy im also running it through a scwd so im close to a 10 x's turn over rate.everybody does things differant in this hobby so i think you should reshearch all you can on sumps and turn over rates and make up your own mind on how you want to do it.there are a ton of people on this site that will help you out along the way me included so keep askin and we'll help all we can.good luck.
 
M

MATRIXINC

New Member
There is something that I still do not understand. How do I regulate the water out of the tank (via gravity) with the water back in via pump. There must be a part I'm missing. Cause I see a problem with either emptying the tank onto the floor or sucking the sump dry as the pump gets ahead of the gravity feed. Oh is the sumb (return) pump controled by an on/off float device?
 
Craig Manoukian

Craig Manoukian

Well-Known Member
With an overflow you will know the designed volume in Gallons Per Hour or GPH. You will then calculate the returm pump needed to accomodate that flow and any head pressure you loose in the return to the display tank.

You can also pump from the display tank "up" to the sump and then have a gravity feed back to the tank.

These will regulate themselves if you set them up properly. Check out the pictures in the link to the Equipment and Set-up photo gallery for some ideas:

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=508&password=

:) :D :cool: ;) :p :smirk:
 
addict

addict

Well-Known Member
The main reason I suggest 4x-6x is because most skimmers are rated with that target in mind (at least I know that Euroreef's are).
I figure that the skimmer is pretty much the limiting factor in the amount of flow that is 'required'... but like you say wooddood, you'll probably never get a consensus on anything in this hobby. :D
 
Pro_builder

Pro_builder

Well-Known Member
The overflow will only flow back to the sump the amount of water that is pumped back to the tank by the return pump. If there isn't enough flow returning to teh main tank, then the overflow box will slow down
 
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