Quote:
Originally Posted by daplatapus
I hope this isn't hi-jacking this thread, but I'm a bit confused with some comments made about moving rocks to the sump. Coral girl said in post #9 that's she's only got 150 lbs of rock for her 180 gallon. Given that the go to answer for "how much rock do I need?" is roughly 1-2 lbs per gallon I'd hardly call that over kill.
I would agree with Albert that there is a point that more doesn't do any good, but in my limited experience, I wouldn't have thought this tank was really there yet. The original question was about moving some of that 150 lbs of rock to the sump so there was more room in the display tank, not adding more rock to the display to get more filtering capabilities.
If the bacteria on 150 lbs of rock is processing all the tanks parameters well, I do not understand why it would matter where the rock is. If someone really likes the look of sand flats and the creatures that lived there, what would stop them from having no rock in the DT and 150 lbs of it in the sump? As long as there is proper water flow and maintenance in both tanks, there's no reason why it wouldn't keep water parameters in proper alignment, no?
I'm not trying to be argumentative either, just curious for my own benefit and others following along. Help me understand  |
The go to answer, in my opinion, is created by people that sell rock. I have always, quite successfully, used ~1/2 pound per gallon. So at 150 pounds, in my mind, that's more than is needed.
Now, let's say we have the perfect amount of rock, and we want to open the landscape a bit. Moving existing rock to the sump removes it from an environment designed to keep it clean. This includes clean up crews, and more importantly, flow. The flow in my DT is about 9000gph. The flow through my sump is 10% of that, which will allow for settling and accumulation of detritus on the rock, which will lead it higher nutrients.
Rock is not an item where more is better. It has to be planned well to facilitate the removal of detritus. Even in a DT, if you have too much rock, you're going to get buildup of crud. I learned this years ago when I took apart a 150g with about 200# of rock. It smelled like a sewer and the water went grey as I removed the rock piles. Since then, I've kept a very open and minimal rock load, and had much greater success in my reef.