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Well dead spots are caused mostly by packing your live rock in too tightly and having a linear flow vs a nice chaotic flow ,"multiple power heads pointed at each other and in different directions." Even 10 x turn over isn't nearly = to a closed lagoon or other fairly stagnant s.w. systems in the wild. Increased water flow also adds greatly to avail disolved oxygen content etc.

It's also much, much cheaper and easier to set up a q.t. vs a UV system. http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51213 I'm not saying that uv doesn't work just that $ could be far better spent in areas such as water flow etc.
hth
Max
p.s. and the difference in cycle doesn't depend so much on the size of the tank as the method you are attempting eg. curred live rock, uncurred, making live rock from base rock, or other.
 
Max;559541; said:
p.s. and the difference in cycle doesn't depend so much on the size of the tank as the method you are attempting eg. curred live rock, uncurred, making live rock from base rock, or other.
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Ahh but you are wrong on this one..those are all methods of Creating a Cycle.

Without spending a ton of typing....Think about what the cycle accomplishes?
It creates amonia, then bacteria (which are already present in low numbers) nitrate, nitrite, then nitrogen.

The whole cycle exists because the bacteria are there already, but with out a food supply, they are indetectable.

So for example... if you were to put 1 small piece of uncurred LR in a 10gal tank..
Your amonia could spike to 10(ppm) then over 2 weeks level off, now you have a "Cycle" of converting amonia to nitrogen. Now that 10ppm of whatever the total volume is...lets say 10 million of the 10 gallon tank..

Now you role back time and use that same piece of LR and put it in a 100 gal tank.

It creates the same amount of Amoina that it did in the 10 gal, but becuase of the water volume being 10x more, you will only have 1 ppm of Amonia..Does that makes sense?
You still have a cycle going....but because it's so diluted it not as detectable.

Now pretend a big fish is like that live rock...you put it in the little tank, it's gonna expel waste and create 1ppm of amonia...lethal

Put it in a 100gal now that amonia is only going to be .1ppm not as lethal.

Now put that fish in a 1000gal, it;s only gonna make .01ppm


I tested my theroy, in my 400 gallon system...I filled it up, let the salt stablize, didn't let it cycle and dumped in a ton of fish...

Guess what...No detectable amount of amonia in the 3 yrs it's been running..

The sheer amount of water volume, diluted the build up amonia long enough for the bacteria to catch up and buffered it from seeing a "cycle" or amonia spike.
 
Max;559541; said:
Well dead spots are caused mostly by packing your live rock in too tightly and having a linear flow vs a nice chaotic flow ,"multiple power heads pointed at each other and in different directions." Even 10 x turn over isn't nearly = to a closed lagoon or other fairly stagnant s.w. systems in the wild. Increased water flow also adds greatly to avail disolved oxygen content etc.
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Also too, I beg to differ on the 10x.

I have 700gph on my 72, and that thing looks like a water ride, I'll video it....that is no lagoon like you say.

Also my 54 has 15x or about 700gph turnover and I'm having trouble keeping my sand down. It's close to a whirlpool.


I'm curious as to what your system setup is? Are you going by pump raiting or taking into consideration Head pressure? Remeber most pumps are rated at 0 ft of head pressure, So even 1 90 degree bend add 1 FT of head pressure, which on some pumps knock as much as 100gph.
 
craig;559594; said:
got any pictures of the MOORISH Idol? I would love to see that.
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Well, you always have to strees your tank to around 3ppm unless you are going for a super pred thank in which case I'd stress to about 5 ppm for the increased bio load.

The material used very much makes a difference in how your cycle works though. For example if you use curred live rock you may never have any detectable readings as your bacterial population will be sufficient to consume anything that you add to the system.

I've never used a fish in a cycle all they can do under the best case is add enough bio load to stress the tank to their own bio load. So when you add another fish you go through a mini cycle. If you are useing mostly base rock with just a little live rock to seed it for the cycle the situation is different. You'd need to keep ammonia levels up for a couple of weeks in order for there to be sufficient bacteria to handle bio load.

Really nice Idol by the way.
Max
 
Well thanks for the advise, Max and fw180galma , i am learning some things here on this discussion. Some of the topics, such as UV and gph are all transferable if you have been keeping fw.
 
hi, welcome to MFK, nice to see more sw people. make sure you post lots of pics up in the photo lounge too ;)
 
Brenden;559355; said:
Hey, glad to see you join MFK. Have you had any experiences with housing sharks? If so please share your thoughts and experiences. As I am looking into making a shark purchase.

Thanks, Brenden
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I have not personally, I did however look into turning my 300 or 180 into a shark tank, so I did do a lot of investigation and research, i'd be more than happy to share what I learned from shark keepers.
 
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