designing a low maintenance system

[nzafi]

Couple things:
- Saltwater are against mechanical filtration because they filter in removing waste and not trapping it. I opened conversations on Reef central and that was the response.
- I’ve never done saltwater but my understanding is those guys are much closer to reproducing the natural environment. Live sand, live rock, corals, etc plus they monitor TDS plus other stuff we don’t

 

[Richie10093]

yeah... 5 years ago I also had a planted community in my dorm room. I am honestly not sure if I ever did a water change until i tore it down to bring it home for the summer. the crypts honestly didn't like it until i got plenty of detritus buildup... but from those experiences I learned about how plants are often limited in growth by co2 in the water which leads to excessive algae growth. That certainly is part of the reason I am attempting this experiment with a floating plants.

 

[Richie10093]

Couple things:
- Saltwater are against mechanical filtration because they filter in removing waste and not trapping it. I opened conversations on Reef central and that was the response.
- I’ve never done saltwater but my understanding is those guys are much closer to reproducing the natural environment. Live sand, live rock, corals, etc plus they monitor TDS plus other stuff we don’t

they do have the easy to use skimmers that set them apart from freshwater, but as duanes mentioned foam fractionation also exists for freshwater. it just needs to be a little different...

also, saltwater is pushing for more sterile in recent days. promoting the use of live sand or bacteria starters to reduce the likelihood of introducing nasty hitchhikers on the live rock, but still get the good bacteria and a more desirable cleanup crew. so they in some ways have been getting closer to freshwater by simplifying the biodiversity in their systems.

TDS is usually only used for checking their RODI water for quality since phosphates or silicates even in small amounts in top off water can cause some undesirable effects. But i digress again...

 

[esoxlucius]

I have a low maintainance system, very low maintainance, and i'll share it with you right now so you can copy it. In a week there are 168 hours and I spend.......wait for it....... 1 of those hours on maintainance! Wow, what does old esox do I hear you gasp. Let me tell you. I do a 70% water change and whilst that's going on I change out my mechanical filtration.

The moral of my story is, although old esox is a lazy so and so he realises that to be kind to his fish he needs to do this maintainance and he does so religiously. An hour is as low as I can get it without introducing a drip system. If I had a drip system my maintainance would be 5 mins a week out of those 168 hours, that would be to just change out my mechanical.

So there you go, get a drip system installed and spend 5 mins a week on maintainance. If you want to shave some time off that 5 mins i'm afraid you need to get a cat instead, they're about as zero maintainance as you can get pet wise.

 

[twentyleagues]

I used to use a "settling chamber" on my salt system. From there it went into the rest of my filtration starting with 50 micron filter socks. I'm sure my skimmer and 50% water changes weekly were a reason my nitrates never were over 10ppm. The socks needed changing every 3 days. And I purged the settling chamber weekly.

Currently my fresh system gets a weekly 80% water change and is slowly undergoing a filtration upgrade. My nitrates are at 40ppm on water change day and I have a ton of plants both aquatic and terrestrial in the tank to suck up "nutrients".

All I can say is you must export the waste, chemical and "physical" or convert it. The very best way is mechanical, you removing the waste and changing the water. While foam fractation works in fresh it doesnt work as well or as completely. Most important piece of equipment in a salt tank is the skimmer people seriously over look this and it can make or break a great system.

I am not nay saying. I want this to work. I hate how the salt world looks down on the fresh. I just had a run in with someone that was picking on a u tuber and I stood up for her. He went to my "channel" and tried to rip me up because the only thing on it is some stuff I loaded spacifically for this forum. So all he saw was my fresh stuff. Regardless he was a DB and will always be. But his attitude was Fresh is simple just turn on some water and your done. While that is partly true I think it's also the reason we dont get the recognition or research into new filtration and the overall keeping of its denizens.

So after a long post about mostly nothing at all, keep it up we need to find our own way. But I think over all your going to find what we already know.....wc and mechanical removal.

 

[Richie10093]

Yup. You do have a low maintenance tank. I have had tanks that I had to do 2 to 3 25 percent changes a week to keep waste levels in check, and it's not a huge deal. I don't mind doing them one bit. But in the situation my tank will be in I will not be around to do it except maybe once every couple weeks or less, and i don't expect my parents to do it. I also didn't want the tank sitting in their house for another year empty, so i thought i could try to make an experiment out of it.

 

[Richie10093]

twentyleagues - that is a very real possibility, and I don't know what level of success i should expect to happen. that said, often in freshwater, the lighting for plants used for nutrient removal is often very sub par when compared to what is often used in saltwater refugiums. I just hope that the overall mindset of throw water in a tank with a filter and you're done isn't the only path. not that things need to be more complicated, but if it can hold some additional benefits with the added complexity, it may be something worth looking into.

 

[J. H.]

Water lettuce , IMO, is a bad choice. Zero Nitrate is easymif you use plants that grow fast and hng out of the fish tank, like pothos, wandering jew, english ivy, coleus, viriginia creeper and chinese evergreen.
I have a 10 I run very low maintance.


You will run into ph and mineral buildup issues very quickly - I keeep shells in my filter and do 50%-90% weekly waterchange to help with that. ( also because there are 2 BNs in thre that poop sawdust which is very hard to clean up.) This setup can handle, from my uing it, 30 guppies, or 2 BNs and a goldfish @ straight zeros. Right now it has 2 BNs & some Redhead fry who eat A LOT (more than 2X what everyone in my 55 eat LOL), so I may need more WC.

 

[Rass]

It's an interesting experiment but it seems like using smaller fish would help out with the nitrate situation.

 

[Richie10093]

I just always saw people throwing water lettuce and hyacinth on ponds to combat algae so I figured it would do a pretty good job... maybe they just blocked out the sun instead of out competing for nutrients! So far i think we can say other plants may be better choice! I got some vine cuttings from some of my parents plants to get them started rolling.

It's cool to see your setup JH! is there any particular reason you have the shells in your filter? a place for the roots to grow? release minerals?

It may have been good to start smaller with the fish selection, but I was thinking fish that produce loads of waste would be the best test for this kind of setup. Also, being carp they produce the growth inhibiting hormones. Since finding a way to combat those would be a big step as well, I figured why not try! (If anybody has any ideas on that, by all means share! I may try the skimming method if i can throw something together. plenty of outlets from my manifold in the sump not being used.) It was only going to be a temporary home for any fish I chose anyway.