making an awesome reef without a sump or refugium

[JedClampett]

Weekly water changes and hob

 

[3dees]

Dang 3dees there's alot of flesh in there and it looks like a heavy bio load, amazing your not having no algae growth or dirty water due to not having nothing to suck up the nutrients like algae

the foxface is about 5". the Lamarck's angel is at about 3 1/2". all other fish are small. I don't consider it a heavy bio-load. a couple of them will get larger but for now I'm fine. 15% wc's bi-weekly is all I do. feed once per day plus nori everyday. never have any nitrates. my hob skimmer does remove a lot of crap.

 

[3dees]

This is my sumpless closed loop 75. Its been up and running for 13+ years.

awesome tank. I would love to have sps, but the whole point of my tank was to go without dosing. I need to keep it simple and easy. I don't even have an ATO. I add my top off water first thing every morning.
it's nice to see other reef keepers that are willing to go another way.

 

[Tommy's Reef]

Nice guys I do the same I got the 210 gallon rated hob octopus skimmer but It don't do enough I'll clean the glass and take sum pics and then in a few days I'll show yall the outcome with sum more pictures it's sum type of brown algae that just slowly creeps in. Nitrates 10 phos 0 I dose alk and cali and mag

 

[Tommy's Reef]

Sum people have problems with green hair algae sum with cynao and sum with diatoms I've never seen algae in my tank except for diatoms I know it's not technically an algae but it feeds on the same stuff basically so wene I put the fuge on there and macro in there I'm sure it will out compete it right. Send pics in a moment

 

[lewis.maryann08]

Pretty tank I clean mine almost everyday and I can't seem to keep the algee off my glass ..I dont have a sump but have thought about getting one to see if it will stay out of my tank I do water changes weekly maybe I need a different skimmer ..

 

[kendavjac]

It can be done, but it is more difficult. IMO the age of the rock in the tank makes a huge difference. When my old tank was new, had the usual nutrient issues. The tank was a 29 biocube and I didn't find any protein skimmers that really made a difference. After about 2 years, algae went away. I had the same bioload (2-3 fish) with a mix of SPS, LPS and zoa's. The tank was on cruise control for another 2 years, then my corals just stopped growing. Tested my water, had not tested nitrate/phosphate in at least 2 years, and found out that my tank had become ULNS. Even after not doing water changes for months I still had 0 nitrates. My conclusion is that as my live rock had matured, it had become an extremely efficient filter. I had to start adding extra food to my system to keep my corals happy.

My current tank is a 125g and has a sump and a good skimmer, but the algae in my refugium constantly dies off. My fish bio-load is much bigger now (3 tangs, 5 damsels, 2 gobies) and I'm having to add nitrates to my system to keep my corals happy. I transferred all of my live rock from the old tank to the new tank and added another additional 60-75lbs of live rock. I'm about to remove some if the new rock because my tank has to much.

I firmly believe that my new tank (running about 10 months) is doing so well because 1/3 of the live rock is at least 7 years old. Its hard to reproduce what good live rock can do when it comes to filtering your water.

 

[reefrider777]

The rock in my tank is the original rock I got 13 years ago. So I agree on seasoned rock is definitely a bonus.

awesome tank. I would love to have sps, but the whole point of my tank was to go without dosing. I need to keep it simple and easy. I don't even have an ATO. I add my top off water first thing every morning.
it's nice to see other reef keepers that are willing to go another way.

I just started dosing for the first time this year. I would always add 1g of Kalk each night at my top off. I wouldn't add anything else. It works, you just have to be diligent with H2O changes.

 

[lewis.maryann08]

So I have another year of this . I have live rock but I may need more I have about 40lb in my 55 gallon ..I was thinking about getting a new 120 gallon will I have to wait for it to cycle before moving everything over?

 

[dbrewsky]

The main issue you will encounter with your aquarium will be simply nutrients. You may notice nutrients building up quicker because sumps may be able to house more efficient filtration but more importantly you are increasing the water volume to dilute the nutrients. Refugiums and skimmers etc will help remove some of the nutrients, however a small refugium will only be able to remove a fraction of the algae driving nutrients compared to frequent water changes.

The only way to combat this build up is reduce or slow the nutrient accumulation by limiting the number of organisms actively producing waste and reduce to amount of food being added to the system which is the main source of fuel for algae.

Example you can have a 50 gallon aquarium with a couple small fish that might not show any examples of algae issues and might only need a small water change once a month.... or you can have 2 tangs and 6 other fish so to speak and might need to do large water changes bi-weekly to keep nutrients from accumulating. This concept applies to all systems and if your focus really is ease of machinate then design your aquarium to reflect this.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Any updates on this one?