Marine tank 6ft update 4/2/12
About time for an update.
With just calcium carbonate gravel and some live rock and a canister it just wasn't cutting it in terms of filtration. The skimmer was working twice as hard as it needed to and the phosphates were always high do to 3 big pooping fish.
My choices were either get a sump and all the associated pumps and media or put in a deep sand bed. Since the sump has ongoing costs like lighting and power for the pump I chose a DSB instead.
Here is the before shot. First out was that great lunking sewer pipe ornament.
Out came the fish into a 65L plastic container with an air stone for about 10 hours. I added a slime coat treatment to their temporary accommodation.
They were not happy Jan!
Out came the live rock that was in there.
Out came the gravel. It is still stored in a container with water and an air stone and I pick out the little worms and critters and return them to the tank when I spot them.
Skimmer off, chiller off, power heads off and canister off. I shortened the canister intake so the new sand won't be sucked straight into it.
In went 90kg of Aragalive Bahamas Oolite sand. No wonder my back was getting twitchy by the end of it.
Didn't it make a cloudy, frothy mess?
I put the live rock back in and positioned it using Braille since I couldn't even see through the water even after a few hours. Immediately the water went pins and needles electric either from the live rock or the little anemones on it.
I turned one power head on and the canister and chiller and after a while the skimmer which proceeded to pull out some of that white frothy mess.
After a few more hours I started to worry if the fish in the container after 10-12hours might just have to go in the tank, cloudy or not. It didn't look quite so cloudy now so first I introduced the triggerfish since he is the easiest to net back out if the water wasn't ok yet. Well he went nuts, ploughed straight into the sand nose first, frantically sat at the front of the glass looking at me like get me out of here! He didn't look ill, apart from breathing a bit fast and in a minute or two he started carefully swimming about in the gloom. He was actually quite pleased he could ride the current of the power head from one end to the other without having to avoid that blue sewer pipe any more.
After the triggerfish had settled down and was happy, the next fish was one of the lionfish, the biggest one. Same thing happened, he ploughed nose first repeatedly into the sand. Had these fish never seen sand in their lives before or just forgotten when they were babies in the ocean? Eventually the lionfish settled down and followed the triggerfish around like a puppy so two down one to go.
The little lionfish went even more frantic when he first hit the sand and the triggerfish actually sat on him and held him down for a minute as if to say 'get a grip!'
Once the lionfish had calmed down he just sat there in the corner not game to move so the triggerfish nipped and led him around the tank until he had the mapping layout of the tank.
Through the night though he mostly sat in front of the power head. Maybe he didn't like the sand in the water trying to attach to his slime coat?
I added Easylife water conditioner so their slime coats would be safer and the tank could get its bio going again.
This morning the tank cloudiness has cleared a lot. The skimmer has settled down and the fish, although a little more sedate than usual, seem quite happy. See my Braille planted live rock? Not bad at all if I do say so myself.
Since I would have lost most of the little critters in the gravel and the live rock I had wouldn't have a whole lot left to seed the new sand bed, I went to the aquarium shop today and got another 12kg of live rock. I just haphazardly added it all into the tank as I will landscape another time. For now all it has to do is drop its payload of little critters and bio life into that sand.
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