Mojoreef's Water Treatment Methods

[mojoreef]

Mark dont worry about your DSB, the bacteria and critter base are not really going to leave it (its a food paradise for them) and if they do they aint going very far. .
On the manderins your best chance of keeping them long term is to convert them to a regular food source you can supply. Ok a couple things on the pods. UV is not going to kill a pod, a good suntan, maybe some leg damage but thats about the worst a UV can do to a critter of that size. Second, a pod is not a DSB critter, yes it can live thier but usually it just goes thier to hunt. A pod is a critter that perfers the rock, that way its not as open to preditors, the most popular spot for pods is hair algae (or simular) if you have a clump near the over flow or accessable give it a yank and watch the pods scater.
On you UV set up it sounds fine, just make sure the out put of the uv falls into the filter pad, that way you can harvest the dead stuff.


Mike

[mojoreef]

edge here is a link, to a bunch of pics of the set up.

here

Mike

[tankgirl]

Yow! This thread sure took off. But, it went way too fast for me. Mike can we back up a minute - I'd like to hear first about that 16' long overflow!!! I guess that's the entire length of your tank, right? Do you have a pic of that I could see?

Also, what do you target with the charcoal filter?

Also, could you tell us about the water flow in your tank? What you use to get it? How you direct it around in your tank?

[mojoreef]

Hi Tg. The carbon filter is just for a polish once and awhile and is not really apart of the system on a day to day basis.
The flow on my system gets kinda tricky but I will see if I can discribe it for ya.
I have 2 closed loops on this tank. Each is run by an Aqua Sea 5000. Water is drawn in by 2 x 1 1/2 bulkheads into the pump then up to a 1 1/2 Motorized ball valve. Each valve has 2 banks of inputs into the tank (5-6) On the tank side of the inputs are 3/4 locline so I can dial in the flow. Approximately 6 inputs from the closed loops are 3/4" mixing eductors, multipling the out put by 5. Each Motorized bal valve is on a random repeat timer that switches them back and forth every 7 minutes. What this creates is areas of wild flow (waves crashing in) and then mild flow (ebbing of the wave) when it switches over. I am really happy with the flow in this tank and all in all it runs about 35000gph. Thier is also a spray bar behind the rock system (feed by a 3000gph return pump) this spray bar does not allow detritus to fall or settle behind or under the rocks. the overall system is designed to flow the water from the bottom back across the bottom, up the front and back across the top.

here is a pic of the overflow, its basically 3 normal overflows that are connected by a 4 x 4 troff.



mike

[dgasmd]

I am glad this actually came up. I think Mike did a great job at pointing out a few things.

There are a lot of misconceptions about UV and ozone in this hobie. Maybe just as many as there is about"plankton, pods, and bacteria" in our tanks.

Most bacteria are attached to substrate, whether that is rock or sand. There is a tons of free floating bacteria, parasites, and tons of other tings that are free floating too, none of which do any real good to corals or fish for that matter. If anything, they may be the source of a lot of diseases in captivity, that bleaching that came from nowhere, that disease outbreak in my tank that has no new fish for months, etc. UV and ozone are great ways to keep those to a minimun when used properly. Fish poop is also loaded with bacteria as yours and mine is. Please find someone that can explain to me how that is any good in a close system.

Like Mike said, pods and other bugs are not free floating in the tank. They reside in the rock and sand bed, so having water passing through a UV filter in your sump has no effect on that. If you really want your pod population to do well and continue to expand, limit the amount of live feeders in your tank and provide areas of "rubble piles" where they can savely reproduce without having predation there because fish can't get to it. There will always be more than enough for them to eat too in your tank so long as you have fish. Fish poop is a great source of undigested vegatable matter, which is mostly what pods consume. So all that algae your tangs and clean up crew graze on all day long is part of what is feeding your pods. UV comes to disturb that in no way here.

The only thing that I still can't be convinced of is to stop the periodic water changes. I respect Mike a lot for his obvious understanding of the hobie, livestock requirements, husbandry, etc, but this is one I can let go of anytime soon. and to make it worse, I have no scientific basis for my attachment to them either. There is something about water changes in my observation that I am not able to measure that does a great deal of good. I can't tell you what it is, but it jsut does it. Maybe it is my expectation of it feeding to results that are not there. Then again, even science hasn't been able to measure and identify everything. I mean, how do we know that hair doesn't grow or stop growing in some people because their skin melanin concentration absorbs some cosmic rays that we don't know of and therefore can't measure. OK, so I went too far there.

Back to your scheduled programing.........

[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.

[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