Help
My tank is 5ft, 400 litres and stocked heavilly and fed very heavily - so lots of waste - skimmer rated for tanks to 1600 litre but pulls a litre+ of skim per 24hrs
old sump was 'traditional' 4 chambers, sand, cheato, caulapera, 24hr lighting etc. -
Due to a mature biopellet reactor and very effective skimmer the algaes lived perfectly but never did any substancial growing so basically I considered it a waste of 2 chambers and the lights.
1)out with a razor blade and all chambers were removed from the sump, all sand, algae etc removed.
2)Uv set up as gravity feed from tanks second overflow pipe (the lower flow surface one)
3)Biopellet reactor T'd from main tank down pipe - 1 inch feed so very high flow, mass fluidising, pellet effluent feed directly to skimmer inlet - going to increase biopellets today to 1.4 litres.
4)Kalc stirrer removed, - going to turn it into an auto hatcher / feeder of live foods
5) calcium reactor installed, ph probes etc. a small feed pipe T'd off a little pump that is currently feeding a rowaphos reactor. (going to consider running calcium reactor from a good quality peristatic pump though having seen Simon G's advce I found on an old thread on UR)
6) 200 micron filter sock on main pipes (as before)
7) 12-15 oysters going in sump - been using a few and very impressed - 48p each and each one syphons 5 gallon of water a day
I expect the phos reactor will be removed soon - considering filling it with dolomite or something very magnesium rich and putting calcium reactor outlet through it - a kind of mag boosting degassing chamber
Skimmer loves it - a larger volumne to work on and the biopellet effluent too - interesting thing the temp rose 1 degree in sump having been stable for 4 months, so heaters have been turned back - even more lecky saved haha
Initial observations 24hrs later - very happy, some visible stringy brown algae gone from 2 seafans (it was reappearing each time i blew it off), torches Huge, acans plumper than before and many corals polyped / feeder tenticles out all the time.
I think 4 or 5ft of solid cheato with awesome lighting (TMC aquagrow plant led tiles are the way to go imo) would have done a similar thing but I never had that much room and i llike the quieter dark sump as its right by the sofa
Been thinking of upgrading our deltec TS1060s to one of those especially with the amount of food that goes in the tank these days. How have you been finding it's performance? Also like the idea of the oysters - do you get them from the supermarket or are you one of those lucky buggers who live by the sea?
