First saltwater tank, 40 breeder

[KleineVampir]

You have any updated pictures?

You're right I should do that. I'll do it tomorrow, gotta do mother's day stuff now. That said, it isn't really complete yet. The amount of obsidian just isn't high enough. So it doesn't look like much.

 

[KleineVampir]

Ok I lied, but honestly it's pretty pitiful at this point. Oh well here's a picture despite it all.

Taken on mother's day, shoulda uploaded it earlier but got lazy.

 

[KleineVampir]

The shipment of obsidian should be here in a couple days.

If this obsidian scheme doesn't work, I may have to resort to even more of a cop-out where I change the water but "treat" the water in it's own separate system to be added back later. Just seems odd considering I'd probably be using an algae scrubber to do that...seems like it should be able to just be a part of the system but maybe not.

Or another option would be to reinstate a refugium. Maybe the combination of fuge and scrubber is where it's at. The amount of knowledge you need of nutrients, algae scrubbing, and refugiums is....well probably more than I could have handled at first but maybe now I can do it. I don't like it though because it adds a step for people. My whole goal is to create a no water change method that works consistently. So far the algae has been too difficult to control, but then again terrible rocks may be to blame. Maybe at this point my scrubber will work and it'll be amazing! Not sure where else those nutrients will go. Obsidian has to be the last place algae could possibly want to grow. And the scrubber is painstakingly designed to grow algae. I mean....gosh! What more can I possibly do??

So far I've gone turbo-scrubber but maybe what would have been better was a turbo-fuge. A refugium and amount of chaeto so massive that it just out-competes any other form of algae.

Also as a small note I fed my fish today by accident. I misread my calendar. I'm planning on just feeding them again tomorrow to keep them on track. Once every 3 days still, so I figure they might be able to use a little extra anyways. Might help get the scrubber going. After the about 5 gallon "water change" that happened after taking out all the sand and rock, the nutrient levels have dropped noticeably. Or at least the algae levels. So yeah it does look like water changes are amazing for your nutrient levels.

 

[KleineVampir]

Just got the rest of the obsidian today. Still needs to have a bath in tap water at least overnight. Lots of dust and what looks like extremely iron-rich dust of some sort. I mean it's like red powder. Looks like plenty of rock in the bucket but we'll see what it looks like in the tank. Might have to do for now even if I could use more. That stuff is expensive! Also it was a bad idea to open them up in a high-traffic area in my house. A place where I walk barefoot a lot. Yeah. Lots of obsidian shards were coming out even though all I was doing was taking them out of their wrapping and into a bucket full of tap water.

Also this complete madness might be working! There is a bit of algae in the scrubber, near the very top. Still some film algae on the glass in the display but at least there's no hair algae! That is how it should be!

Should be able to get the rocks in tomorrow but I might decide to give them another day unless I really feel like manually rinsing them off. It's kind of a lot of work. These things are heavy and sharp, which is a fun combo when grabbing them bare-handed! Still it'll probably be worth it to see what a reef tank looks like with a crap ton of obsidian in it. Gonna see if I can't pile it pretty high to give those fishies some hiding places. I definitely want as much space as possible between the rocks.

 

[KleineVampir]

Well I put the obsidian in today. Still not a ton but definitely a lot more than there used to be. They might have to live with this for a while. Might have to take them all out and put them back in, not sure if I like how they're situated right now. Then again there is a decent amount of space between the rocks. Might just have to get used to it instead of constantly messing with it.

 

[KleineVampir]

Well this experiment has taught me a lot. I now know there are 3 places your nutrients can go. The water, your rocks, and your small scavenger creatures, especially things like bristle worms. I think part of what happened to me is that all the over-feeding built up and caused an enormous algae issue. I really didn't think that feeding once every other day was too much but apparently it was. Also in the beginning I was feeding pellets which probably didn't help.

Thankfully I was able to observe all the creepy-crawlies that would come to life after the lights went out. There were definitely too many of them. I might go so far as to say that if you see bristle worms in your tank you're feeding too much. Right now I feed once every 3 days and the fish are alive and well but there are no longer such things as bristle worms. So there is a margin between feeding your fish and feeding the fish AND the worms! For me the 1 block of brine shrimp with selcon once every 3 days is enough. The current fish being 1 tang (and yes he eats the shrimp), 1 clownfish of medium size, 1 small clownfish, and 1 cardinalfish.

So yeah, right now there is algae growing in that scrubber! Still a bit of film algae on the glass but no hair algae in the display. I think the obsidian is working as intended. Now the nutrients have nowhere to go so they just stay in the water until they run into the scrubber.

If I see some level of success with this, I can start trying to make the tank more interesting again. I made the mistake of buying coral when I had not yet dealt with my nutrient issues. Also I bought too many. Buying a million zoas at once seems to be a bad idea. Maybe they are just too aggressive with one another to exist in a system as small and closed as mine. So yeah it's like a big 200 (or was it 400?) dollar zoa massacre that I totally regret.

At least this entire time I kind of had the right idea to run this as an experimental tank to learn on.

The next step is to amp up into putting normal reef rocks back into the tank. Then if I somehow pull that off, the step after that is to actually start a tank and have it succeed with normal reef rocks with no water changes. By then I will have finally defeated water changes completely and utterly! For both freshwater and saltwater.

 

[KleineVampir]

Ok I gave this system a long time to even itself out and possibly grow algae in the scrubber. Believe it or not, it still isn't really working. But only because the scrubber is actually too powerful for its own good. I could just put the shade cloth back on it but I decided to try something different. I got my dad to donate one of his socks to this cause! Yeah that's right, if you thought I was nuts before... Anyways, desperate times call for desperate measures. So yeah I put a sock in the scrubber. I figure the sock will probably grow algae on it but perhaps more importantly it'll provide some much needed shade. It is a white sock. Maybe a black sock would be even better. But you know, this really is uncharted territory!

I'm hoping the sock will encourage the algae to grow, and then I can take it out. Seems like this is a really uphill battle at first. Honestly the opportunity to test algae scrubbing has never really been better.

Interestingly, the scrubber is only growing algae on the very top. My theory is that it grows there because the water is able to reflect some light away from that area since that is often the water line. The air pumps are so strong that eventually there is a constant air pocket a good couple inches wide at the top.