Reef Pilot's Undersea Oasis

[Reef Pilot]

I could never find out exactly what brand name or model skimmer this was. No ID plate and could not find a good match with internet searches. Might have been partially DIY.



It was a dual beckett skimmer, with a gate valve outlet and a fine mesh cheese type cloth to catch the micro bubbles. The pump was a Sedra 7000 (700gph), hardly enough power to drive the two becketts. But it did produce some skimmate, and I had to occasionally empty the collection jug. What I discovered afterwards, when I took apart the pump for some cleaning, is that it had a pinwheel impeller with an air intake at the input. I guess between the pinwheel and the becketts, it did work, to some degree. Definitely not something you would ever buy off the shelf, though.

[Reef Pilot]

This is my tank overflow. Definitely no bean animal, herbie or durso... Just one drain at the bottom flowing down to the sump in the basement. No noise, though, but the flow is not that high. And the top of the overflow has a styrofoam cover and is inside a closed canopy. I clean the teeth at the top with a toothbrush every few months, to prevent any algae build-up. It's been this way for 13 years, and never a problem.

[Reef Pilot]

Right beside the sump, on the right, is a 1/3 hp chiller. It was driven by a Mag 5 (500 gph) in the sump. With the T5's and all the pumps, never needed a heater initially. But the chiller ran a lot.


Also in this pic, on the right, is my DIY carbon/gfo reactor which I added later. It is just an old Ro canister set that I converted by enlarging the ports to 3/8 lines to increase flow. The first canister is just a pre-filter, the 2nd for carbon, and the 3rd has GFO.

[Reef Pilot]

To the left is a 2nd sump that I was using for a 2nd tank that I set up downstairs. But initially, it was my QT for new fish, as well a refugium with caulerpa and chaeto.


I had it connected to the sump using this DIY overflow. It had an airline connected to the intake side of a pump in the sump which made it basically foolproof. It prevented the syphon from ever breaking, and would self prime if the power went off.

[Reef Pilot]

And oh, almost forgot about this giant MDM Sequence (not sure about the model name) 3600 gph pump which was used to to drive a closed loop system in my upstairs tank. I decommissioned it after adding some in-tank wavemaker powerheads. Anybody looking for a powerful but cheap return pump?...

[Reef Pilot]

I mentioned at the beginning that I had really high nitrates (up to 100ppm) in my 10+ year old tank. After reading on Canreef and elsewhere about refugiums and macro algae, I decided to give that a try. As you can see, caulerpa and chaeto thrived in there.


But it didn't make a dent with my nitrates. I also did big water changes, and the nitrates would drop a bit then, but be right back up there in a few days. Seems that I just couldn't get them to stay below 40 ppm for any length of time.

[Reef Pilot]

I also bought a new skimmer (Vertex In-280), and while it definitely pulled more skimmate, still wasn't making much of a difference with my nitrate problem.


Then I read about bio pellet reactors, so went out and bought a Vertex UF20 (just to the left of the skimmer). I also used MB7 to prevent cyano. I started out slowly with the bio pellets (as recommended), and initially didn't get much results, even after a few months. But gradually I increased the bio pellets and was able to fill the entire reactor with bio pellets (1000 ml). Then finally, my nitrates started to come down. It took another 6 months or so, but eventually they came down right to zero. I had to top up the reactor every few months. But no question in my mind, bio pellets do work, if you have a serious nitrate problem. Again, want to emphasize the importance of MB7 to out compete the cyano.

I still run the bio pellet reactor today, and my nitrates stay at zero. But interestingly, the bio pellet consumption has all but stopped, and have not had to replenish the reactor for almost a year now. I am even considering stopping it, just to see what would happen to my nitrates.

Once the nitrates were under control, I also added GFO to bring down my phosphates. That was with my 3 canister DIY reactor as shown earlier in this thread. It took another 6 months or so for the phosphates to come down (were over 1.0) to zero. But finally had my tank down to zero phosphates and nitrates.

And it really showed in the tank, with the detritus and algae pretty well gone completely. Of course, all along the way, I was scrubbing the rocks and vacuuming the sand. But eventually it all paid off.