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I was thinking about that... Does anyone see a big issue with having them open ??

WOOT, my first split, and it was on a post by me :D

Here are the columns in place... I am not quite finished with them, I just wanted to test the fit...

http://600gal.asnatlas.com/Resized/PVC%20columns.jpg

http://600gal.asnatlas.com/Resized/P...%20-%20ref.jpg

http://600gal.asnatlas.com/Resized/P...20-%20sump.jpg

Those look great! Check out Steve Weast's experience with the Worm Incident...that will make your toe nails curl up and fall right off. :D

Yea I know all about his worm incident... I hope that my tank will look half as good as his one day... I have only used baserock in the display and don't plan on adding any LR with out cooking it first... If a worm were to make it into the ref or sump where these columns are I don't see him making his way into the display, at least not in one piece...

My main concern is the water that might remain stagnant in the columns... I am not sure how well it would get circulated...

i dont think there will be a problem with stagnant water. i wouldnt worry about it. there is a large enough water volume there that the 3-4 gallons or less that is in those pipes will never all rush out at one tiem to polute the water. it will just be starved of oxygen and once it makes its way out of the tube it will be fine. you just cant get enough flow out from under that crack to make any kind of a diffrence.

This is such and interesting concept to me, and I mean no offense whatsoever...Why buy live rock if you are going to cook it? You are paying a premium price for importation of specialized material, and then you will kill everything that comes in on it.

I realize that this is "the way it is done" but I just don't understand it. I brought my rock in, swished it in a bucket of SW, inspected and removed unwanted hitch-hikers, and tossed it into the tank. I immediately fired up my lamps and managed to save a lot of the natural life that came in on the rock.

Don't get me wrong, some of the life I saved isn't neccessarily desirable, but most of it is and the rest can be managed. I had a wicked HA outbreak because I had no skimmer on the system, and if it weren't for that, I would have saved hundreds of encrusting corals too. (some of which have come back anyway)

I ended up with very cool sponges, a couple thorny oysters, various inverts including stomatella (which are breeding), limpets, fan worms, macro algae, and incredible coraline algae in purple, blue, red, orange, green, and yellow. And probably most important of all, what we cannot see, is a huge variety of bacteria found on a natural reef.

If you are going to cook your rock, why not just buy cool shapes of $1/lb. base rock and seed it with coraline? That will give you the effect you want without the high cost of "live" rock. And if I may rant a bit more, what we see in LFS stores is NOT live rock IMO. It was live rock when they received it, but I have yet to see an LFS keep the rock under conditions that keep it alive.

Tyically they dump it into a tank with very low light, stacked to the rim, and most often without even a skimmer on it. Within a matter of just a few days that rock is as dead as it gets. And then the store wants $6-$12/lb!!

None taken... As for buying LR I am not going to go spend 6-12.00 per lb from a LFS... I will wait for local reefers selling it and if I need some than at that time I will pick it up for a good price...

Once I pick up the rock from them it goes into a covered rubbermaid tub that is headed with a powerhead... Before I place the rock in the tubs I look it over to make sure there is nothing I want off it that will not make it through the cooking process... The pods, sponges, and bacterial will survive as those things do not need light to survive, and there will be food for them during the process...

In the past I have taken things and just threw them into my other tanks and that is not going to happen with this new one as it's MUCH larger and if something gets out of control then it's just going to be that much harder to fix... I feel I will have the upper hand if I QT everything (LR, Corals, Fish) that goes into the tank and in the long run will only help in the success of the system...

The above is just how I feel about the subject and I am in no way telling others to do the same and follow in my foot steps...

Please feel free to reply... I don't want this to turn into a debate, but I would like to see a few other large tank owners views...

Last nite...
 

Last nite while I was at work and not watching the OSU vs Mich game... I was looking into The Sulfur DeNITRIFIER... I have read about these before in the past (the non sulfur ones) but when looking over everything it almost seems like a CA reactor with with a layer of sulfur in it ?? Am I missing something or if I really wanted to have some type of unit removing my nitrates then could I add a few pads to my GEO reactor with a layer of sulfur ?? I do plan on having macro algea in one for the 50gal tubs but would a DeNITRIFIER reactor help / be better ?? I would like to run one if it will help but would rather not spend $500.00+ if I am able to convert something I am already using into something that would work...

I hear what you are saying about the rock, and I understand your methodology. I too try to QT everything but what I find is that corals can only survive in my QT for short periods of time. So essentially I use the QT to treat new arrivals but I do not leave anything in there for an extended period. I have been contemplating UV for my QT which I think would improve it usefulness. The big tank issue is important because when I initially designed my system, I figured I would be bringing in new arrivals one at a time, but in reality, I bring in much larger quantites and therefore my QT is much too small.

You could say that my display was my "QT" for my rock. I had 250 lbs. of rock from the guy I bought the tank from, and it actually got vooked as I had a pump overheat the water and it killed everything in the holding tank, including several thousand bristle worms. That was a mess! Then I brought in another 525 lbs. direct from MI and into my display, added on top of the cooked rock. I have been very happy with it and the only real problems I can report are that the macro got out-of-hand and I have a serious case of aiptasia right now. For the macro, I popped in a seahare and it polished off every last scrap of the grape caulerpa. I am a bit bummed about that becuase I would like to have a little bit in the display. The aiptasia did not come in on the LR but as hitch-hikers when I did not properly QT an inbound polyp rock.

Contact NexDog about his experience with the denitrifier. I seem to remember that it did not produce the results he expected. When I built my Multi-Media reactor, I left room for various media and figured I might run sulfur in it, but my research so far doesn't support the practice. I am a bit shy of putting something so caustic as sulfur into my system in the first place. And you are about right with regards to the reactor...it is a lot like a CA reactor.

I was thinking about the Sulfur DeNITRIFIER reactor some more tonite and it does seem like a CA minus the C02... So I am guessing that I would not be able to add a Sulfur layer into my GEO CA reactor due to the C02 I am injecting ??

Again any input would help...

i really dont think you need the sulfur denitrator. your skimmer should be big enough to handle the nitrates you have in the system. if you end up with nitrates in your system you skimmer is not doing its job properly. thats a bubble king you have if i remember right, so it should be fine. you would be waisting your money on that reacotr if you got it. you sould never have a nitrate spike. that system is not that big. and that skimmer is huge so it sould pull out all the nutrients before they start breaking down and turning into nitates. bill wann was using a sulfer denitrator for years. he took it off his system now that his big skimmer is running on there. his nitrates are at zero.

I totally agree with that. Nitrates are at the low end of risk in our reefs anyway IMO. Phosphate is the tough one. Nitrates can easily be reduced through water changes, removing detritus, etc. whereas phophates can leach in through Ca reactors and embed in the rock.

My nitrates have been zero since day one, and I rarely vacuum my tank.

Good to hear :) Like I said I only wanted it "IF" it was going to do some good... I just read all these threads about people having nitrate problems and don't want to get to that point...

BTW, I rem you posting about Bill getting his RO stuff some a few different places, could you post those links again... I am looking for bulk DI and what not... Also I think you posted something about using a specific (higher) grade, what is the advance over the "standard" DI ??

Thanks for the reply jnarowe, I will be running BB so it should be easy to keep detritus out of the display as well as the over all system... I am just hoping that the BK400 is as good as some say :)

he gets nucular grade di resin from a company out in california. i think you have to be a lab or do things with lab equiptment. i will try and fing out for sure though. i have looked at there website before and its all huge ro/di stuff for comerical use.

where would one get $1 a lb base rock??? the cheapest i saw was $3 a lb. :confused:

When I ordered my baserock from reeferrocks I got it for just a little over $2.00 /lb shipped to my door...

haven't bought in a while so I can't come up with any links for you but I know you can find it. In fact, you could make your own for less and get the exact shapes and sizes you want. I think reeferrocks.com was one source I looked into but I don't see any prices on their site today.

:lol: you beat me to it!

thanks guys emailing now, i thought the reefer rocks base rock was $3 a lb for some reason.

Well I am putting together a new fish / invert list...

I am looking at the following...

FISH :
Potters Angel
Flame Angel
Scooter Blenny
Firefish Goby
Rainfordi Goby
Royal Gramma
Niger trigger
Magnificent Foxface
A few Yellow and Purple Tangs
Sailfin tang (Red Sea) AKA : Desjardini
PowderBlue Tang
Achilles Tang
Exquisite Wrasse

Inverts :
Peppermint shrimp
Cleaner Shrimp
Fire Shrimp
Mexican Turbo Snails


Does anyone see anything questionable with the above listed livestock, if so why ?? Also do you see something that could be added that would benifit the over all system ??

The system will be BB with 4x6200s and 2x6100s...

I've had a flame angel in the past and it nipped at everything except zoos, so it was sent to the pound (aka traded for frags). Now I have a potters and he does the exact same thing, but this time I'd rather have the fish over the coral b/c he's so beautiful.

Well now you are just inviting a heated debate aren't you! :D

I would reconsider the Mexican Turbos. They are not really a desireable invert in that they are from cooler water than what your reef will be kept at. I admit I have quite a few of them, but it was my first invert purchase and I didn't have much knowledge about them. Also please note that while they mow down the HA like a John Deer on roids, they also excrete massive amounts of poo. Piles upon piles...

Yellow and purple tangs can be trouble and I lost my second yellow last week do to the ganging up of another yellow and a purple on the victim. Sailfins are cool but keep in mind they get very large and can also be fairly agressive.

I can't really comment on the gobies and personally I stay away from the angel family. I would highly recommend a lawnmower blenny as they are extremely active and help keep the tank tidy. I would also look into bristletooth tangs as they actually eat detritus as well as algae.