 State
of the Tank: 2/04
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it's plumbed, its maximum operating
water level is only 18”, thereby
further reducing volume to about 50
gallons. Its MINIMUM operating water
level (the level it must maintain to
avoid cavitation) is probably 8” however,
maybe more. So the bottom line here
is that with a 500 gallon full blown
reeftank, plus a 29 gallon refugium,
I've got 30 gallons of water
to play with…if it's full!
This all really hit home this month
while trying to acclimate several new
frags and corals at once. I go through
a lot of water doing this. Well, I 'don't
got' a lot of water! So I'm
saying to myself, this is ridiculous!
I realize I have severe space limitations
in my workroom, but I've GOT
to do better than this.
Another problem is that I probably have 5000 gallons an hour pouring through the thing and I’m planning to have even more. When the tank was set up, nearly 10 years ago, I had never heard of ‘closed loop’ systems. Nor were there Tunze streamers, eductors, or any of the other popular water moving devices currently on the market. In fact, there were barely ‘sps’ corals (I meant ‘sps’ corals that were maintained at home, not before they evolved, wise guy)! So initially I suppose, the sump was adequate. Unfortunately, as the system began to evolve, the sumps’ limitations made themselves evident very quickly. Take for instance, the filter socks: They’re the 18”, 50 micron variety and due to the volume of water that passes through them, they get clogged very quickly, like every 2 days. When that happens they will simply overflow their discharge back into the |
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sump, causing lots of micro-bubbles. Sometimes however, the sheer weight of the water in them will literally pull them off the intake pipe, causing the flow to pour like a fire hose straight into the sump. This causes so many bubbles in the tank the water becomes opaque. And, of course, because of the irritation, many of the acros begin to slime copiously which exacerbates the problem even more. This, as I’m sure you might guess, only happens overnight or when no one is home. But even when things are running smoothly, I still have to share my workspace (read: trip over) with several buckets of bleaching micron socks (of the kind into which my Crosshatch made splashdown), and bottles of Clorox which we KNOW is an accident waiting to happen. I mean, ever notice how similar they look to bottles of B-ionic from above? Yeah, me too.
So, completely stumped for an answer (remember, my workroom space limitations will not allow for a much bigger sump than I have), I was quite coincidentally contacted by Greg Schiemer regarding my Advanced Aquarist article. Seizing upon this golden opportunity, I immediately invited him over for an evaluation like he did a few years ago (and which, in fact, helped get me to this stage). He kindly accepted and we met a couple weeks later. As before, most of Greg’s suggestions had to do with hardware. One of the ‘mixed blessings’ of this hobby is that the methodology seems to evolve quickly and the equipment gets more efficient all the time. |
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