almost 35 year old reef pictures

[Uncle Luke]

LOL! I guess I could have worded that better...

[rick8335]

cool pics

[rick8335]

cool pics

[rick8335]

cool pics

[Micki]

Originally posted by rick8335
cool pics

Oh no! Triple post!!! The last time that happened to me I had a virus!

[jvetter]

Paul,

In the picture of your homemade skimmer, I think that I see a Sanders Ozonizer. Have you been using ozone? If so, how are you dosing it?

I am setting up a larger tank. My 30 gallon tank is getting a little overcrowded. I am going to decorate with a bottle also. I am thinking Makers Mark. Cannot wait to empty a bottle.

Nice tank. Thanks for keeping it going for so long, and for sharing it with us.

[Paul B]

I have always used Ozone. The thing is set on maximum which is 400mg/oz.
On such an old tank the orp never goes too high anyway. It stays around 300 but I have no idea if that reading is accurate or not.

[Orvis]

Paul, your tank has inspired me to start a reef tank with a bottle or two in it. I will keep it as low tech and as natural as possible. I do have experience keeping marine fish. What advice would you give a new reefer.

Respectfully,
Jim

[Paul B]

What advice would you give a new reefer.

Probably not to do a lot of the things I do.

I have been doing this a long time. The bottles will not hurt anything. I think you should find someone in your neighborhood with a nice old tank and see what he does.
Don't read too much into posts on this site or any other site. 99% of this hobby is opinion and 95% of those opinions are from people who have less experience at it than you do.
Good luck.
Paul

[ox5477]

Crazy man... like seeing the pics from 20 years ago.... nice to see that hippos and clowns were present before that "nemo movie"..... just seems like thats all you hear now

Crazy longevity in the hobby man. Truely in aww... maybe one day I can join a forum on whatever connection device is invented from now until then and share pictures of my tank from now... awesome

Ox

And to clarify... not saying your old

[tcmfish]

Actually both fish clear the nest so your older clownfish is definately the female. They are Protandric Sequential Hermaphrodites meaning male first then female. Protogynic would mean female first.

[Orvis]

Originally posted by Paul B
Probably not to do a lot of the things I do.

I have been doing this a long time. The bottles will not hurt anything. I think you should find someone in your neighborhood with a nice old tank and see what he does.
Don't read too much into posts on this site or any other site. 99% of this hobby is opinion and 95% of those opinions are from people who have less experience at it than you do.
Good luck.
Paul

Thanks Paul, I'll keep that in mind.

[Paul B]

maybe one day I can join a forum on whatever connection device is invented from now until then and share pictures of my tank from now...

My first forum was called a telephone and it had a wire connected to it a straight wire too not a spiraled one.


Morissey,
OK then I should have known from her eyelashes

[cabrego]

Awesome stories and information!

Would you care to share your knowledge in my RUGF thread?

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...5#post13508475

[woodiecrafts]

I never get tired of seeing pictures of your tank nor hearing about the way you have it set up Paul. I always manage to learn a little bit more each time I re read your threads. I wish you many more years of fantastic reefing.

[sunfishh]

I second what Woodlecrafts said.

[Paul B]

Thanks guys

[EnglishRebel]

Paul
I'm planning my first tank and am intrigued by your RUGF. Is there an article anywhere that shows exactly how to set it up? Do you have to seal the UGF with silicone, what type of gravel (size etc.) do you use, how deep is the bed.
Thanks

[EnglishRebel]

Paul
Sorry to be so uninformed but what exactly is an 'algae tray'?
Thanks for your forbearance.

Sorry for the post - should have done a search. I found it in your post about 6 pages back

[Paul B]

Alan since you choose to ignore my recomendations to not do what I do I will explain it. I am sure in this 3 year old thread it is in here a few times.
An UG filter comes with "up lift" tubes. I plumbed all three of them so they all come up in one rear corner of the tank. They all enter the bottom of a small plastic container that was an old hang on filter. There is a powerhead in the tank that supplies 150 gallons of water per hour to this container so each tube gets 50 gph.
There is no silicone involved. It will take a few months for the thing to work properly as any tank will need time to cycle.
A year will be better because it needs some detritus in there to function enough to control nitrate which will rise initially.
You need to strain or filter the water going down under the gravel. I now have a sponge but I don't like it. It lets too much through. I used to have a better filtering method which I am re designing.
I use dolomite gravel which has a grain size like rice. Give or take.
You could use crushed coral as long as it is not fine like sand.
Rice size is perfect.
Resist the feeling to send water through the system fast. Slower is better. My tank is 6' long.
An algae tray or trough is just a plastic trough that I have sitting above the water to the rear and slightly under the lights. It does not shade any portion of my reef but it shields the rear of my tank from light which makes it look much more natural anyway.
The tray is slightly tilted and is the length of the tank. It is made out of a 4" vinyl fence post from Home Depot which is sliced in half long ways. It is about one and a half inches deep.
Water is fed to the higher end from the skimmer but any pump will do. It travels 6' to the lower end which just touches the water.
There is a plastic window screen in the trough which is infused with cement. I do this because algae grows much faster on cement than anything else.
To get the cement on the screen I first sandpaper the screen with course sandpaper to roughin it up. Then I mix some Sakrete morter mix and smear it on. Keep it damp, then in a few days, rinse it off. A tiny bit of cement will remain. Lay this thing in the trough and let it extend a little into the water on the low end. This is to prevent splashing.
Eventually, if algae is going to grow in your system, it will grow there first because growing conditions are better. It is closer to the lights, the water is moving faster and there is cement in there.
To clean excess algae off the screen, just roll it up and remove it.
Leave algae growing on there all the time to help clense and oxygenate the water.
Thats it

[EnglishRebel]

Thanks Paul.

[conorwynne]

Paul,

If you were to change anything design-wise of the tank, what would it be? A sump? Additional flow (closed loop?)

I imagine these could easily work in confunction with the RUGF.
I'm asking as I'm open to ideas for my new tank.. researching...

Conor.

[Paul B]

Conor the only thing I think I would change is the way I filter the water before it goes to the RUGF. I used to filter it in a small tank behind the main tank now I just use a sponge which I don't think works wery well.
This tank has been re designed forever and it runs just about maintenance and problem free. I rarely have to put my hands in or on it and I almost never have to spend any money on it. I am surprised the two pumps that run the skimmer are still going, they are both over ten years old, maybe 15.
I never had a sump and see no need for one now. I built the HOB skimmer so a sump while is nice to have extra water in there, would do nothing. I also never liked the idea of drilling a perfectly good tank. I do have a homemade surface skimmer that feeds the protein skimmer which works very well and needs no cleaning or other maintenance. The protein skimmer feeds the effluent to a 5 gallon bucket placed under the skimmer. There is a float switch in the bucket in case the thing overflows which happened once when 24 urchins spawned at the same time. The float switch shuts off the pumps for the skimmer. It also shuts them off if there is a leak.
As for flow, there are 2 large powerheads but I usually only run one of them. I feed live baby brine shrimp every day and with both pumps runing the fish have trouble catching the shrimp.
I can't think of anything I would change because if something needed changing, I would have done it by now.

[Paul B]

So far my smaller gobi experiment seems to be going well.
Of course I have way too many fish but they are small and although I don't test for anything I can tell the nitrates are zero. If I have time I will bring a sample of my water to a LFS to check it just for documentation purposes. My kits are older than many people here and are useless.
I think I have 25 fish in the tank which is as close as I can count.
Except for a hippo tang, bangai cardinal, engineer gobi, a butterfly that I collected locally in NY, 2 fire clowns and a blue stripped pipefish the rest are gobies or bleenies. Some are spawning and some are fighting or at least not tolleration each other on the same side of the tank. That is normal and happens with all spawning fish in breeding condition.
I feed the tank every day with live baby brine which is the only way to keep these small fish especially the 4 small clown gobies and the blue stripped pipefish.
I am very happy with the way the tank has evolved. I am a little concerned that there is no algae growing anywhere but the tank does have a thin covering of a reddish type of algae, no it's not cyano although there is a little of that in the shadows as there always was. There is an old red scooter bleeny that seemed fat so a few months ago I added a mandarin. They seem fine.
When I add a fish like a clown gobi they exhibit ich for a few days then it goes away and the fish seems immune for the rest of it's life. The locally collected butterfly also did that but he has been there for a few months and is clean also.
I did change some water last week or so and since I have to go to my boat again to store it for the winter I will collect some water along with some growth from the dock for the added fauna and bacteria. Some local mud snails I added at the start of the summer are still living which I am surprised about.
There are about 10 or 15 hermit crabs in there some are I think almost 10 years old. I bought them, they are not local although I have some local ones in another tank

[Paul B]

The gobi experiment is going better than expected, I have two pairs spawning but I am not yet trying to raise the fry.
Today I thought one of them was dying because I fed the tank live worms and one gobi would not eat. She would just sit under a rock and let the worms bounce off her head which is a sure sign of a dead fish in the morning. After a while of me annoying her she decided to turn the other way and I could see how pregnant she was. I diden't even know this pair was spawning.
She looks extreamly fat and should lay some eggs very soon.
(or die depending on how she delivers) Some fish have a hard time in a tank especially when they get chased.
This is the best picture I could get because she was in the rocks and I moved a rock to get the picture.
You can see the belly though.