Pictures of Bomber's barebottom SPS tank and related equipment - Page 18

melev · 12/29/2004, 10:58 PM

Cody, go back about 2 or 3 pages to see some pictures Greg posted. He's a miracle worker with Photoshop.

Cody Ray · 12/30/2004, 03:15 AM

So what your saying is that its all the computer's handy-work, am I right

j/k Bomber you have always had a beautiful and "truthful" aquarium, meaning that it is one of the most natural-looking aquariums I have ever seen. I hope to someday have such a beautiful aquarium.

melev · 12/30/2004, 05:26 PM

Yep, it's all fake. I mean, we all know that Bomber really has a DSB in there or it wouldn't work. Greg just photoshops it out to make this great thread what it is today.

Cody Ray · 12/30/2004, 08:00 PM

Lol, eather way it looks good

melev · 01/01/2005, 08:26 PM

Bomber, I just noticed your location is the Florida Keys. How did your tank survive the four hurricanes last fall? I don't recall reading any threads or posts by you talking about needing a generator or having any problems.

Are you in contact with Martin Moe? I was told he lives in the Keys as well. Any news?

I bet your BB tank did better as you don't have to worry about oxygen consumption, plus you have a lighter fish load.

The Yellow Longnose · 01/01/2005, 08:28 PM

nice tank

curthendrix · 01/03/2005, 06:02 PM

Great thread guys. Has anybody tried an urchin in an acrylic tank? Would the spines scratch the acrylic? If so, are there any options available, other than scraping, for coraline algae in acrylic bb tanks?

Bomber · 01/03/2005, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by melev
Yep, it's all fake. I mean, we all know that Bomber really has a DSB in there or it wouldn't work. Greg just photoshops it out to make this great thread what it is today.

You know that valve you put under your tank Marc. The one labled "do not touch".

Bomber · 01/03/2005, 06:58 PM

Bomber, I just noticed your location is the Florida Keys. How did your tank survive the four hurricanes last fall? I don't recall reading any threads or posts by you talking about needing a generator or having any problems.

We were unbelievably lucky. We are able to completely power without relying on the mainland though.

Are you in contact with Martin Moe? I was told he lives in the Keys as well. Any news?

They live two islands below us.

I bet your BB tank did better as you don't have to worry about oxygen consumption, plus you have a lighter fish load.

We have generators to back up our back up generators.

maxxII · 01/03/2005, 07:42 PM

Jerel,
I saw the thread on TRT where you and several others were discussing any potential flaws of a BB system. One of the things mentioned was intriguing to me. Middleton Mark stated he continued to have issues initally with nuisance algae until he changed his flow pattern to blow on the rocks as opposed to stir detritus up from the bottom of the tank and get it in the water column. Can you expand more on this? I'm curious how this flow directed at the rockwork will affect the corals.

Or am I thinking to hard about this?

Nick

Bomber · 01/03/2005, 08:01 PM

Hey Nick!

Mark didn't cook his rocks enough for one thing.

I know people are talking about flow and SPS and that might be partly our fault. We were all dwelling on the best way to get flow without repeating why we wanted it.

SPS don't really care that much about that much flow. It does no good to have a lot of flow and just keep moving detritus around. The flow needs to be there to get the detritus to the skimmer so it can take it out.
I have my sump rigged so the sump/tank loop is running on a Iwaki100.

The skimmer - on a Iwaki70 - picks up in the first compartment of the sump that the tank drains into. Then the skimmer dumps back into the second compartment of the sump.

If you can imagine, I have it dialed so almost all the water from the tank is picked up by the skimmer in the first compartment. Very little flows over the damn and into the second compartment of the sump.

MiddletonMark · 01/03/2005, 08:35 PM

Bomber's right ... my rock wasn't cooked as part of my `removing substrate' process.

I have since taken some out to cook and put already cooked stuff in ... but that is probably now 1/3 [?] of the rock - and in late summer when I had the issues maybe 1/10 of the rock.

IMO, my rock shed `strongly' for 3 or 4 months. Bi weekly piles of substrate to siphon up - could have done it daily [and did for periods]. It blew me away. Months of crap, with a macro-algae boom [particulate detritus IMO on the rock] right near the end.

True to form, though ... as things got cleaner and cleaner the algae slowly lost color and withered away. It took more patience than I wanted, but yet even the red hair small spot I've had for a year is gone. I'd cook the rocks more next time ... but yet having gone thru the process without losing a coral, I'll take the slow process to get `here now'

.

And I was removing a 1/2" or less bed of 1-3mm + sand ... not a true DSB at all, not even close. I'm probably not the best example, given that.

I'd agree about the flow. There's a `mojo' to it for a 58g tank IMO ... it's a long way up to that overflow.

It's easy to focus on randomization, plumbing, or gph when -> `its how you use it' is the effective part to focus on.
I run less flow than I did at one time, and am happier with what the water is doing ... though I know I'm still at the excessive end of flow. I prefer the windblown look, I guess.

It's so hard to explain flow, and I don't feel like I have it down yet. Best way is to say that while I still have about the same amount collecting on the bottom [in the same two spots it always collects] .... but after my flow-scape-change only in one spot of my LR do I get significant amounts of detritus when I turkeybaste the LR. Everywhere else is clean, with minimal to no detritus there to disturb.
I'm assuming that stuff now makes it to the overflow, and is that particulate crud in the bottom of my skimmate container. I guess that's the best way to try to explain what's different with my flow - the rocks aren't collecting debris in any significant extent.

melev · 01/03/2005, 11:13 PM

Very interesting. My own tank had high PO4 a couple of months ago, but I've been bringing it down without changing my feeding routine. I proactively did my best to remove as much detritus as I could from the sump and refugium. Each water change I create such a storm in there that brown 'chocolate milk' is pumped out of the sump and disposed of.

I turn off my sump at every feeding, so the food stays in the tank and doesn't feed the 'Overflow Aptasia' or the 'Sump dwellers'. The refugium still gets food because when the system is restarted something always ends up in the current and down to the sump. My overflows don't collect detritus at all. They are virtually clean, even though they are filled with 27" of water (Durso Standpipes).

This rock cooking thing has piqued my interest many times, but I've not made the time to read that thread yet. It definitely seems like a new trend has formed on RC about it. I doubt I could cook any of my own unless I had extra on hand that I could put in the tank in its place.

MiddletonMark · 01/04/2005, 06:06 AM

One more thing to add - it seemed like for me things didn't really start `cleaning up' until the remote 'fuge [w/ DSB, very smal] was removed.

Much of that 'fuge rock went to be cooked, seemed to me more `saturated' with sand than the main-tank stuff.

That's when I started having the macro-problems ... and when it started on the way to cleanup. While I was bare in main tank before that - not much really `changed' until the 'fuge was gone.

Cody Ray · 01/05/2005, 12:54 AM

Wow Mark, you have more pacience that I do!!! I removed my sand bed the week before christmas because I was having some algae problems. Now it is hard to find any besides some nice macro I find growing in small patches.

MiddletonMark · 01/05/2005, 06:14 AM

This hobby is nothing but patience.

I stocked my tank from frags ... took a year to have them truly colony size now. Will be another year before everything in my tank is colony-size ... then just another 38 years of life to enjoy them as big corals. Seems like a long pay-off period for only a few years of patience ... though that's not how most folks like to see it.

I try to work towards what my tank will be in 6 [or 12] months ... as often it takes that long to get things where you want then stable for long enough for everything to `boom' ... or for the new frag to grow into decent size.

But I'm just as impulsive as the rest. It's no fun having patience, but if I want a TOTM or similar stunning tank, that's the only way to get there that I've seen.

Cody Ray · 01/05/2005, 06:16 PM

Good words!

musicsmaker · 01/05/2005, 07:46 PM

Haven't tuned in to this thread for a while. Bomber, where can I find the most recent pics? Any growth comparison pictures? Would you fall off your chair if I went BB?

Bomber · 01/06/2005, 09:15 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by melev
This rock cooking thing has piqued my interest many times, but I've not made the time to read that thread yet. It definitely seems like a new trend has formed on RC about it. I doubt I could cook any of my own unless I had extra on hand that I could put in the tank in its place.

Marc, think about bacteria, nutrients, etc. Then think about rock.

People go out of there way to buy rock with the most life on it. What conditions would that rock have to have been in to support "all that life"?
Then they put it in a system that they are trying to run nutrient poor (SPS particularly), a system that won't support "all that life".
Then think about what "nutrient" is associated with "all that life" that you are trying to eliminate from a SPS system.

What you're trying to accomplish with rock "cooking" is to clean up that rock ahead of time. So you don't add all that phosphate to your system from the get go.

Quote:

Originally posted by Bomber
There's a lot of things that go on in the hobby that I think totally flies in the face of common sense.

Like buying rock "with all that life on it", thinking that you're going out of your way to cycle it to preserve "all that life" - and then putting it in a system that you're trying to run nutrient poor and starving "all that life" so it just dies and releases nutrients.

Bomber · 01/06/2005, 09:17 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by musicsmaker
Haven't tuned in to this thread for a while. Bomber, where can I find the most recent pics? Any growth comparison pictures? Would you fall off your chair if I went BB?

Nope, I didn't fall off the chair when I went BB either. LOL

I'll work on that. Let me see what I can find.

melev · 01/06/2005, 09:31 AM

Just tell him to scroll back 3 pages to see Greg's images. Remember those photoshop'd ones?

Cooking LR. Crazy talk.

Bomber · 01/06/2005, 09:36 AM

It's really just aging it better. Get the nutrients out before you put it in the tank.
Even if you go DSB, I've never understood not "cooking" the rock.

The first thing a DSB does is create a nutrient poor system as it gets established. It needs those nutrients to work. People add live rock that's full of nutrients associated with all that "life".

AJtheReefer · 01/06/2005, 09:39 AM

Bomber,
Thank you for all the information. It is hard to argue with success.

Is the use of dry rock recommended? so you would only need to cook a portion of the live rock to seed the dry rock?

Thanks

melev · 01/06/2005, 09:41 AM

I've found that it is easier to just enjoy the rock as it is. I've never looked for any life on my rock when shopping at the LFS, other than coralline. I like the purple stuff. Now some of my rock is 7 years old, some is 4, some is 2, some is 1.5, some is 1. Hopefully they aren't chocked full of nutrients and decay, but I have to accept that some must need cooking.

Have you ever taken rock out of your existing tank to cook, so you can reuse it later? Or only with the new rock coming in?

bigben · 01/06/2005, 09:44 AM

hey marc,

in my existing tanks, i've always just blown the rock with a high flow of water (powerhead or nasal bulb) once a month or so. you'd be amazed at how much crap builds up inside of them. the corals always seemed to love this too (polyp expansion and feeding).

i've ALWAYS cured my new live rock for 1-2 months before adding to the tank, though. during this process, i blow the insides out, too.

12/30/2004, 03:15 AM	#427
Cody Ray Registered Member Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 5,101	So what your saying is that its all the computer's handy-work, am I right j/k Bomber you have always had a beautiful and "truthful" aquarium, meaning that it is one of the most natural-looking aquariums I have ever seen. I hope to someday have such a beautiful aquarium. __________________ Limit 1 stupid question per day Current Tank Info: Mr. Aqua 7.5g bowfront

12/30/2004, 08:00 PM	#429
Cody Ray Registered Member Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 5,101	Lol, eather way it looks good __________________ Limit 1 stupid question per day Current Tank Info: Mr. Aqua 7.5g bowfront

01/01/2005, 08:28 PM	#431
The Yellow Longnose Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Plymouth Meeting PA Posts: 563	nice tank __________________ And when he gets to Heaven To St. Peter he will tell: "One more Soldier reporting, Sir -- I've served my time in Hell." Current Tank Info: 180sw,24sw Jbj nano cube reef. Hopefully a 3gallon Pico in the near future

01/03/2005, 06:02 PM	#432
curthendrix Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Tulsa Posts: 758	Great thread guys. Has anybody tried an urchin in an acrylic tank? Would the spines scratch the acrylic? If so, are there any options available, other than scraping, for coraline algae in acrylic bb tanks? __________________ Curt Current Tank Info: 500g inwall

01/03/2005, 07:42 PM	#435
maxxII Super Housemonkey! Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: St Louis Mo Posts: 4,442	Jerel, I saw the thread on TRT where you and several others were discussing any potential flaws of a BB system. One of the things mentioned was intriguing to me. Middleton Mark stated he continued to have issues initally with nuisance algae until he changed his flow pattern to blow on the rocks as opposed to stir detritus up from the bottom of the tank and get it in the water column. Can you expand more on this? I'm curious how this flow directed at the rockwork will affect the corals. Or am I thinking to hard about this? Nick __________________ A good friend will come and bail you out of jail...but, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn, that was fun!"

12/29/2004, 10:58 PM	#426
melev Moved On Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Ft Worth, Tx Posts: 43,217	Cody, go back about 2 or 3 pages to see some pictures Greg posted. He's a miracle worker with Photoshop.

12/30/2004, 05:26 PM	#428
melev Moved On Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Ft Worth, Tx Posts: 43,217	Yep, it's all fake. I mean, we all know that Bomber really has a DSB in there or it wouldn't work. Greg just photoshops it out to make this great thread what it is today.

01/01/2005, 08:26 PM	#430
melev Moved On Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Ft Worth, Tx Posts: 43,217	Bomber, I just noticed your location is the Florida Keys. How did your tank survive the four hurricanes last fall? I don't recall reading any threads or posts by you talking about needing a generator or having any problems. Are you in contact with Martin Moe? I was told he lives in the Keys as well. Any news? I bet your BB tank did better as you don't have to worry about oxygen consumption, plus you have a lighter fish load.

01/03/2005, 06:58 PM	#434
Bomber 10 & Over Club Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Florida Keys Posts: 10,550	Bomber, I just noticed your location is the Florida Keys. How did your tank survive the four hurricanes last fall? I don't recall reading any threads or posts by you talking about needing a generator or having any problems. We were unbelievably lucky. We are able to completely power without relying on the mainland though. Are you in contact with Martin Moe? I was told he lives in the Keys as well. Any news? They live two islands below us. I bet your BB tank did better as you don't have to worry about oxygen consumption, plus you have a lighter fish load. We have generators to back up our back up generators.

01/03/2005, 08:01 PM	#436
Bomber 10 & Over Club Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Florida Keys Posts: 10,550	Hey Nick! Mark didn't cook his rocks enough for one thing. I know people are talking about flow and SPS and that might be partly our fault. We were all dwelling on the best way to get flow without repeating why we wanted it. SPS don't really care that much about that much flow. It does no good to have a lot of flow and just keep moving detritus around. The flow needs to be there to get the detritus to the skimmer so it can take it out. I have my sump rigged so the sump/tank loop is running on a Iwaki100. The skimmer - on a Iwaki70 - picks up in the first compartment of the sump that the tank drains into. Then the skimmer dumps back into the second compartment of the sump. If you can imagine, I have it dialed so almost all the water from the tank is picked up by the skimmer in the first compartment. Very little flows over the damn and into the second compartment of the sump.

01/03/2005, 08:35 PM	#437
MiddletonMark Registered Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Madison, WI Posts: 14,441	Bomber's right ... my rock wasn't cooked as part of my `removing substrate' process. I have since taken some out to cook and put already cooked stuff in ... but that is probably now 1/3 [?] of the rock - and in late summer when I had the issues maybe 1/10 of the rock. IMO, my rock shed `strongly' for 3 or 4 months. Bi weekly piles of substrate to siphon up - could have done it daily [and did for periods]. It blew me away. Months of crap, with a macro-algae boom [particulate detritus IMO on the rock] right near the end. True to form, though ... as things got cleaner and cleaner the algae slowly lost color and withered away. It took more patience than I wanted, but yet even the red hair small spot I've had for a year is gone. I'd cook the rocks more next time ... but yet having gone thru the process without losing a coral, I'll take the slow process to get `here now' . And I was removing a 1/2" or less bed of 1-3mm + sand ... not a true DSB at all, not even close. I'm probably not the best example, given that. I'd agree about the flow. There's a `mojo' to it for a 58g tank IMO ... it's a long way up to that overflow. It's easy to focus on randomization, plumbing, or gph when -> `its how you use it' is the effective part to focus on. I run less flow than I did at one time, and am happier with what the water is doing ... though I know I'm still at the excessive end of flow. I prefer the windblown look, I guess. It's so hard to explain flow, and I don't feel like I have it down yet. Best way is to say that while I still have about the same amount collecting on the bottom [in the same two spots it always collects] .... but after my flow-scape-change only in one spot of my LR do I get significant amounts of detritus when I turkeybaste the LR. Everywhere else is clean, with minimal to no detritus there to disturb. I'm assuming that stuff now makes it to the overflow, and is that particulate crud in the bottom of my skimmate container. I guess that's the best way to try to explain what's different with my flow - the rocks aren't collecting debris in any significant extent. __________________ read a lot, think for yourself Current Tank Info: 58g stony reef [250w10k, 250w 20k MH, 2x vho act, Octopus150, 6060 + 6000] ; 60g mixed tub

01/03/2005, 11:13 PM	#438
melev Moved On Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Ft Worth, Tx Posts: 43,217	Very interesting. My own tank had high PO4 a couple of months ago, but I've been bringing it down without changing my feeding routine. I proactively did my best to remove as much detritus as I could from the sump and refugium. Each water change I create such a storm in there that brown 'chocolate milk' is pumped out of the sump and disposed of. I turn off my sump at every feeding, so the food stays in the tank and doesn't feed the 'Overflow Aptasia' or the 'Sump dwellers'. The refugium still gets food because when the system is restarted something always ends up in the current and down to the sump. My overflows don't collect detritus at all. They are virtually clean, even though they are filled with 27" of water (Durso Standpipes). This rock cooking thing has piqued my interest many times, but I've not made the time to read that thread yet. It definitely seems like a new trend has formed on RC about it. I doubt I could cook any of my own unless I had extra on hand that I could put in the tank in its place.

01/04/2005, 06:06 AM	#439
MiddletonMark Registered Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Madison, WI Posts: 14,441	One more thing to add - it seemed like for me things didn't really start `cleaning up' until the remote 'fuge [w/ DSB, very smal] was removed. Much of that 'fuge rock went to be cooked, seemed to me more `saturated' with sand than the main-tank stuff. That's when I started having the macro-problems ... and when it started on the way to cleanup. While I was bare in main tank before that - not much really `changed' until the 'fuge was gone. __________________ read a lot, think for yourself Current Tank Info: 58g stony reef [250w10k, 250w 20k MH, 2x vho act, Octopus150, 6060 + 6000] ; 60g mixed tub

01/05/2005, 12:54 AM	#440
Cody Ray Registered Member Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 5,101	Wow Mark, you have more pacience that I do!!! I removed my sand bed the week before christmas because I was having some algae problems. Now it is hard to find any besides some nice macro I find growing in small patches. __________________ Limit 1 stupid question per day Current Tank Info: Mr. Aqua 7.5g bowfront

01/05/2005, 06:14 AM	#441
MiddletonMark Registered Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Madison, WI Posts: 14,441	This hobby is nothing but patience. I stocked my tank from frags ... took a year to have them truly colony size now. Will be another year before everything in my tank is colony-size ... then just another 38 years of life to enjoy them as big corals. Seems like a long pay-off period for only a few years of patience ... though that's not how most folks like to see it. I try to work towards what my tank will be in 6 [or 12] months ... as often it takes that long to get things where you want then stable for long enough for everything to `boom' ... or for the new frag to grow into decent size. But I'm just as impulsive as the rest. It's no fun having patience, but if I want a TOTM or similar stunning tank, that's the only way to get there that I've seen. __________________ read a lot, think for yourself Current Tank Info: 58g stony reef [250w10k, 250w 20k MH, 2x vho act, Octopus150, 6060 + 6000] ; 60g mixed tub

01/05/2005, 06:16 PM	#442
Cody Ray Registered Member Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 5,101	Good words! __________________ Limit 1 stupid question per day Current Tank Info: Mr. Aqua 7.5g bowfront

01/05/2005, 07:46 PM	#443
musicsmaker Premium Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Ravenna, OH Posts: 3,059	Haven't tuned in to this thread for a while. Bomber, where can I find the most recent pics? Any growth comparison pictures? Would you fall off your chair if I went BB? __________________ "The best threads rest with The Ancients..." - The Ancients.

01/06/2005, 09:31 AM	#446
melev Moved On Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Ft Worth, Tx Posts: 43,217	Just tell him to scroll back 3 pages to see Greg's images. Remember those photoshop'd ones? Cooking LR. Crazy talk.

01/06/2005, 09:36 AM	#447
Bomber 10 & Over Club Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Florida Keys Posts: 10,550	It's really just aging it better. Get the nutrients out before you put it in the tank. Even if you go DSB, I've never understood not "cooking" the rock. The first thing a DSB does is create a nutrient poor system as it gets established. It needs those nutrients to work. People add live rock that's full of nutrients associated with all that "life".

01/06/2005, 09:39 AM	#448
AJtheReefer Registered Member Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: South Florida Posts: 399	Bomber, Thank you for all the information. It is hard to argue with success. Is the use of dry rock recommended? so you would only need to cook a portion of the live rock to seed the dry rock? Thanks __________________ 90G AGA, 30G Sump, SLS Tek Lights 8x54w, H&S A150-F2001

01/06/2005, 09:41 AM	#449
melev Moved On Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Ft Worth, Tx Posts: 43,217	I've found that it is easier to just enjoy the rock as it is. I've never looked for any life on my rock when shopping at the LFS, other than coralline. I like the purple stuff. Now some of my rock is 7 years old, some is 4, some is 2, some is 1.5, some is 1. Hopefully they aren't chocked full of nutrients and decay, but I have to accept that some must need cooking. Have you ever taken rock out of your existing tank to cook, so you can reuse it later? Or only with the new rock coming in?

01/06/2005, 09:44 AM	#450
bigben Premium Member Join Date: Jan 2000 Location: Tyler, TX Posts: 1,332	hey marc, in my existing tanks, i've always just blown the rock with a high flow of water (powerhead or nasal bulb) once a month or so. you'd be amazed at how much crap builds up inside of them. the corals always seemed to love this too (polyp expansion and feeding). i've ALWAYS cured my new live rock for 1-2 months before adding to the tank, though. during this process, i blow the insides out, too.