New to hobby 56 cloumn...a few ?s

Jordan_L · Aug 29, 2018

I've had freshwater tanks for years, most recently kept Africans. Just started into SW. FOWLR.
56 column tank
Marineland M360 (100 gal)
Reef Octo 1000 HOB (not running yet as there is no protein to skim)
2 Hydor Koralias - one 850, one 1150 (they only had one 850 left so I had to get the larger)
about 20-30lbs LR
I'm having a few issues. the biggest being that my sand is blowing everywhere, causing little hills and divots.
The other is this canister is blowing 10000000000000000 microbubbles everywhere, every 10 seconds. No leaks that I can find. Videos say to cut the barbs off of the intake tube?
Can anyone help with these newbie issues? Thanks

jsker · Aug 29, 2018

Welcome to R2R

Jordan_L said:
I'm having a few issues. the biggest being that my sand is blowing everywhere, causing little hills and divots.

I would suggest moving the pumps/powerhead higher in the tank, point them away from the sand toward the surface.

On the canister, I have not Idea. Lets ask the #reefsquad and see what they come up with.

mta_morrow · Aug 29, 2018

Welcome to R2R and sorry this has to be your first post.

I have no experience with canister filters unfortunately.

Can you post up a few pics of your tank that shows your power head placement and the sand hills and valleys?

Try to get full tank pics from the front and sides

Jordan_L · Aug 29, 2018

mta_morrow said:
Welcome to R2R and sorry this has to be your first post.

I have no experience with canister filters unfortunately.

Can you post up a few pics of your tank that shows your power head placement and the sand hills and valleys?

Try to get full tank pics from the front and sides

This is the best pic I have at the moment, I'm not home right now... Thanks

Crabs McJones · Aug 29, 2018

Welcome to R2R! Try re-positioning your powerheads. The sand you used is very fine and doesn't take much to blow it around. I used the same stuff and ended up removing it as my powerheads were clearing it out anyway. Running semi-bare bottom now.

JoshH · Aug 29, 2018

For the canister filter there might be a gap or hole somewhere in the feed line coming from the tank and this is sucking air in. As for the sand, I have the same sand and found adjusting my rock structure helped break up the flow so it wasn't hitting the front panel as much. I have much more rock though so might be a little more difficult in your setup. Depending on what coral you plan on keeping you probably won't need that much flow anyway, until you get into SPS that is. If your set up is a fish only/softy tank for now you should be able to just use the one power head. Try and point it up at the surface, this will help lessen the flow reaching your sand and as you don't have your skimmer online yet it will help wih oxygen exchange.

Lovemyreef2015 · Aug 29, 2018

Welcome to R2R

Jordan_L · Aug 29, 2018

Lovemyreef2015 said:
Welcome to R2R

thanks!

Chrisfish · Aug 29, 2018

Welcome to R2R, tank is looking really nice

Jordan_L · Aug 29, 2018

Chrisfish said:
Welcome to R2R, tank is looking really nice

thank you!

Jordan_L · Aug 29, 2018

Thanks all for the replies! Trying to get this thing all figured out before I start adding fish. I'm sure I'll be back often!

jdpeters · Aug 29, 2018

Jordan_L said:
Thanks all for the replies! Trying to get this thing all figured out before I start adding fish. I'm sure I'll be back often!

Patience and research is everything. I have to be very careful to not impulsively buy anything. I hate sand and I’m on my third reef tank now and this is the third time I’ve worked on slowly removing it.
As to using a canister it is typically argued that they have no business in a sw tank. I would suggest running and modifying some aquaclear 110s. Welcome to sw and make sure persevere!

hdsoftail1065 · Aug 29, 2018

Welcome to R2R! Tank is looking good!

jsker · Aug 29, 2018

@Jordan_L

Looking at the picture, they system looks as though it was just setup. How long has the system been setup?

Jordan_L · Aug 30, 2018

jsker said:
@Jordan_L

Looking at the picture, they system looks as though it was just setup. How long has the system been setup?

Just a week

Jordan_L · Aug 30, 2018

Update: The tank is clearing up nicely. Microbubbles sort of just stopped for now.

As for the sand blowing issue - I moved the power heads very slightly and it seemed to fix the issue, Is this placement decent? the current is not blowing "through" the rock as much as I would like though - does this matter as much for just live rock? I would like to have some soft coral and anemones eventually...

jdpeters · Aug 30, 2018

Should be fine. You have a lot of open space, I can’t imagine flow is suffering. You might find dead spots but without any coral it shouldn’t matter.

Jordan_L · Aug 31, 2018

Thanks for the replies. One more question - the Reef Octopus HOB - how can you unplug it and then retstart it without it overflowing? I didn't plan on running it 24/7.