Sorry guys, I got a bit busy with life (Christmas and all) and building a new 65g frag tank with a 120g sump/refugium/DSB. LOL
Sdoutreefer, your original post asked if you should be running carbon, not will carbon make my water more clear. The answer is yes it probably will make your water more clear. My follow up question is, is that good for your corals and fish or just for your eyes?
A couple of you ask about perfect water... my water isn't perfect, but it's low maintenance and easy. I have a 180g mixed reef and a 70g anemone tank, so 250g of display water that share a 150g or more sump/refugium/DSB. The 180g tanks has about a 2-3" sand bed and lots of live rock which is almost all off the sand. The refugium is 2' x 2' x 16" (about 45g) and is full, sometimes very full of cheato. I also have a bit of gracilaria algae growing in the anemone tank. Next to the fuge is a 2' x 2' x 8" DSB with 6" of water flowing over it and some coral and anemones as well. The sump is a 2' x 2' with a submerged pump and a 2nd 2' x 2' section with an AquaMedic Turbo 5000 Shorty that is gravity fed from the 180g DT. I have a total of 3 drain lines. I use filter socks on the 2 from the 180g and none on the 70g return. I do 25g water changes about every 4-8 weeks.
I feed a very wide variety of foods to a wide variety of fish, crabs, snails, serpent stars, sea cucumber, 1 banded coral shrimp and 30 large to very large coral colonies. I feed frozen, gel, freeze dried, liquid, grannuals, flakes, powder and cut up fresh stock. I also do 2 sheets of 4" x 4" nori. I feed that every other day on average. Sometimes I'll do 2 or 3 days in a row but I reduce the amount on the 2nd and 3rd days. But sometimes I won't feed for 2 days and on rare occasions I've even gone 3 days. Over feeding is one of the biggest pollutants in our tanks.
I dose calcium and soda ash 24/7 with a medical grade dosing pump at the rate of 300ml of the BRS recommended levels. BTW, I use Dowflake for calcium (50lb bag for $28) and soda ash from a pool supply. I dose mag manually and use Mag Flake and epson salts bought in bulk from a California supplier. My parameters run like this:
temp 78-80F, SG 1.025-27, cal 420-440, alk 7-9dKH, mag 1400-1500, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 0, phosphate 0.0-0.2. I seriously never test for ammonia, nitrite or nitrate unless something big goes missing in the tank. I only test for phosphate if I see any algae in the tank (the last time was 2+ years ago).
I also have lots and lots of water movement. My sump return is split in 2 by a SCWD and is delivered to the tank by 2 'spraybars' that run down the back of the tank behind the rock wall. I have a Closed Loop with an Ocean Motion 4 way and 3 Revolution heads which really randomizes the flow. And I have 2 Jebao WP25 wave makers running on 2 timers. They run 8 hours each with a 2 hour overlap... think tides in the ocean. And with my LR up off the sand I get good flow even at the sand. I have never had cayno in the 180 and only once in the anemone tank, so I added a WP25 in there as well.
I credit my luck (I don't think of it as success) to the raised LR and extra good random water flow. It's got good volume (about 30-35 turns per hour), but it's got lots of outlets and is super random which keeps stuff in suspension better than most people's tanks I see. Then there is a lot of LR (probably 225-250lbs), a big refugium, a big DSB, and a good skimmer. My water may not be crystal clear, but it's way more natural than most, fairly easy to take care of and very inexpensive to run. No carbon, no GFO, no vodka dosing (or any other carbon source), no bi-pellet reactor, just as much Mother Nature as I could fit in along with some uncommon build ideas. It's a bit over 4 years old now and I need to frag corals badly. Some are running into the front glass and there are more and more coral wars starting up all the time. That's why I'm building a 65g frag tank and a 120g sump system.
