The key to ultimate long term success in the hobby is not just having the ultimate system and the hottest equipment – it’s the effort that you put in as a hobbyist to provide your animals with the best possible care.

I can’t think better advice to give to a new (or experienced for that matter) reef aquarists. It is really important to understand the message: the success depends only on you and your actions. A good aquarist with mediocre equipment will always beat a mediocre aquarist with good equipment.

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I have a couple of my own, more grumpy advice:

Don’t just sit there, do something!

The saying “Only bad things happen quickly in a reef aquarium” has some merit but many have taken this far too literally. If you can see there is something wrong in the aquarium it calls for a immediate action. Don’t just sit there wishing the problem will go away by itself. There is absolutely no reason to prolong the stress the inhabitants are experiencing.

Only ask if you can’t find the answer.

I don’t agree with the phrase “There are no dumb questions, only dumb answers.” The question that has been asked hundreds of times is a dumb question indeed if it is repeated. You will learn a lot more by doing the research yourself.

And finally, one of my favorite quotes:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

- Albert Einstein

Related posts:

1. It is a sad, sad hobby
2. ULNS is not really L and far from UL
3. Let it foam: Selecting a skimmer

I think one of the problems is the definition of the term “Ultra Low Nutrient System.” It seems to me that this description really has nothing to do with the amount of nutrients in the system. Reading some of the forums where the term ULNS is most often used it looks like people understand ULNS as a system that uses some form of DOC dosing and/or zeolites to aid in nutrient export. Obviously that tells us nothing about how much dissolved nutrients there really are in the water. Some “ULNS experts” even insist that you should always have some measurable phosphates and nitrates in a “ULNS” reef aquarium. Talk about contradiction in terms!

However, the question remains: why are corals so stressed in ULNS systems that they suffer from chronic partial bleaching (“pastel” colors) and very quickly develop tissue necrosis after small and for most systems benign change in water chemistry? People like me have been using DOC dosing for more than 10 years and never had the kind of problems ULN systems have. Large number of people (including me) have maintained healthy reef aquariums with constant “zero” nutrients and high alkalinity for several years. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the term “ULNS”must mean something else than low nutrients and DOC dosing with or without zeolites.

So why not just be upfront about it and say you are using ZEOvit? It is very confusing when people describe their system as an “Ultra-Low Nutrient System” when it clearly isn’t. It is even more confusing when people claim that it is the low nutrients that cause the many problems so common with ZEOvit system. It is almost 100% certain that aquarium corals will never suffer from “too low” inorganic nutrients. Nutrition is a completely different story. Together with intentional heavy metal poisoning the lack of proper food is certainly a good candidate for many problems…

Truly L NS

What I would consider to be a low nutrient reef aquarium would be one with similar levels of dissolved inorganic nutrients that are commonly found at costal reefs. The “Ultra-Low” would be reserved for tanks with even more nutrient poor water, something like remote oceanic reefs.

Below is a recent study on water quality on several costal coral reefs in Australia. These values are a result of large number of measurements from several sites and I think these could be used as a guide to LNS aquarium. Many reefs have order of magnitude lower inorganic nutrient levels but getting aquarium water so clean might prove to be an impossible dream.

Note that the values are in ug/l (1 ug/l = 0.001 mg/l or 0.001 ppm).

Taking the annual mean values, a good candidate for a LNS reef aquarium would have 0.003 ppm PO4, 0.003 ppm nitrate and 0.2 ppm silicate. For phosphate, that’s 1/10th of detection limit of best PO4 test kits and 1/100th for NO3. Note that silicates are often too low in a typical reef aquarium!

Related posts:

1. Guidelines for some parameters from Kleypas et al
2. Water au naturel
3. Back to spirits (Updated)

CaCO3 slurry

One of the idiots responsible for cloudy water

I started experimenting with this method when I noticed that I couldn’t keep the water clear with conventional mechanical filtration. I have four Pomacentrus simils that keep digging the sand bed and are constantly introducing small particles into the water column. I was using a traditional setup of a powerful powerhead and some filtration mat but I clearly needed something more efficient.

I had used very fine home made aragonite (CaCO3) powder over the years whenever I thought the water could use some “polishing” and it worked very well. So this time I was going to do the same but together with mechanical filtration which would trap most of the particles and thus create much more efficient filtration media. Fresh CaCO3 surface is an excellent binder of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and is also known to bind phosphate so those were an added bonus.

It quickly turned out that the enhancing mechanical filtration part of my idea was not working so great – the rate at which the fish add particles is just too fast for any filter to keep up with (unless I add the filter into the display tank itself which I certainly do not want to do). Instead I noticed much improved water clarity and  less yellow coloration. So much so that I completely removed the activated carbon (GAC) filtration I had used for years. To my surprise, daily additions of CaCO3 slurry was able to keep water very clean even without the help of GAC. I did eventually add some carbon back to filtration because my feeding experiments but still the performance of aragonite powder was surprising to me.

I think this method is something more adventurous reef aquarium owners might want to experiment with. Producing your own CaCO3 slurry is very easy and much, much less expensive than buying the same stuff in those nice little blue bottles.

1. Mix together 2:2:1 calcium chloride, sodium bicarbonate and calcium hydroxide. BE SURE TO WEAR MASK OR OTHER PROTECTION. DO NOT INHALE THE DUST.
2. Fill large container with hot water
3. Slowly add the mixture, constantly stirring the solution. This will create a lot of carbon dioxide so be careful not to add the mixture too fast or it will overflow.
4. Let it sit so that the precipitate drops to bottom
5. Carefully pour out as much water as you can and refill
6. Go back to 4. Repeat a couple of times. This rinsing is necessary to get the NaCl out of the solution

Sugar

I don’t think there’s much to say about DOC dosing that isn’t well known by all reef aquarists. Sugar (sucrose, a molecule combining glucose and fructose) is just one of the possible sources of organic carbon reef aquarists can use. It is cheap and very pure form of OC.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that DOC also benefits directly certain invertebrates that are able to feed on DOM and/or have symbiotic bacteria. As I have started to use Biopellets (described later) I’ve started to wonder if it is beneficial to continue DOC dosing even if not absolutely necessary for inorganic nutrient reduction. The question is which one is more beneficial, the production of bacterioplankton by Biopellets or the direct feeding of DOC by the symbiotic bacteria in sponges, for example. Naturally dosing of organic carbon in liquid form also has its drawbacks. For example, as the DOC is distributed evenly in the system, bacteria often grow in places you don’t want them to. For example in pipes and hoses, reducing the water flow significantly or on the glasses and other visible surfaces.

I’m currently using a solution of 400 g/l sucrose. Total daily dose is 10 ml split into 8 doses that are added by the dosing pump.

Biopellets

The amount of bacteria produced by Biopellets is simply amazing

A while ago I was reading an interesting article on coralscience.org about filter feeders that mentioned a new, interesting filtration media called Biopellets. This media is a solid form of organic carbon (POC, particulate organic carbon) on which bacteria can grow and multiply.

Using organic carbon in a solid form has many benefits and hardly any drawbacks compared to DOC dosing. First of all it provides essentially a limitless amount of carbon for bacteria to utilize. The only limiting factor is the amount of free surface area. To optimize the performance you should either use the media in a fluidizing filter or disturb the media mechanically every now and then.

Biopellets also solve the problem of bacteria growing in unwanted places by concentrating much of the production inside the filter instead of distributing the organic carbon all over the system. At the same time this can also be a negative thing because of the fact that much of the particulate matter that every captive reef produce in abundance is going to be broken down somewhere else in the system, typically in sand bed and live rock. As it has become more and more evident that much of the nutrient cycling through microbial loop in reef aquariums is limited by the amount of labile organic carbon it seems to me that these processes could benefit from the addition of a carbon source (DOC). One interesting possibility is to add some pellets inside the sand bed. There is a concern about the possible H2S production but it should be remembered that there is a very oxygen rich layer on top of the sand bed that should easily oxidize H2S if it indeed was produced.

Third benefit is convenience. It is much easier to add some pellets every 6 months than it is to dose minute amounts of DOC varieties. Disturbing the pellets inside a media bag is also not a big commitment. Even I can manage to do that.

Tunicates love to eat bacteria produced by Biopellets

To me one of the best features of Biopellets is its ability to produce a huge amount of bacterial biomass which in turn is excellent food for many filter feeders. The bacteria will come off the Biopellets as large aggregates that will be broken down to progressively smaller clumps of bacteria by the pumps. Bacteria aggregates are the most important food source for many difficult to keep invertebrates like bivalves and tunicates. These animals are typically unable to filter out single bacteria (they are called crude filterers) but when they are clumped together like in nature they are filtered out extremely effectively. Fine filterers like sponges and some polychaetes are also able to eat these particles in addition to single bacteria cells. Any bacteria left uneaten will be removed by protein skimmer or they will populate other aquarium surfaces and continue their work there.

All in all I’m very impressed by this new method of providing more natural environment for reef creatures. I’m especially thankful that there still exists people and companies who are able to innovate instead of copying. Why is it that many times it is the individuals or small companies like Reef Interests that come up with new exiting ideas? Most of the larger aquarium companies seem to only copy the same 30 additives and equipment that everyone else is producing. It is then left at marketing to try to differentiate the products from the rest and everyone knows what the marketing department produces. There are many companies with absolutely no original product ideas.

I’m sure the less capable companies will soon try to copy Biopellets but I think we hobbyists should try to support companies like Reef Interests as much as we can so that the art of reefkeeping moves forward.

Biopellets is made by Reef Interests and should be available in EU stores soon.

The cone: “Medium” from Aquarium Technik Burian (ATB)

ATB skimmers can be completely taken apart for cleaning

I finally got my new skimmer, model “Medium” from Aquarium Technik Burian (ATB). This is the first “high end” piece of equipment I’ve ever owned and I’m glad I did spend almost all my savings on this excellent foam fractionator. It is my opinion that most of the time the “high end” just means “more expensive” without any real benefit but in this case I was paying not only for the best performance in it’s class but also for a legendary customer service and support.

I’m so tired of the modern way of doing business where you must fight every step with companies when you try to solve problems or even to actually get your purchase you’ve paid for. Many times you just don’t get any help. This was once again my experience with ATI when I tried to find out what options I had to replace a pump that had just died on my ATI Bubble Master. This is the original model (without any number after the name) that used single, hand modified version of Eheim 1262 pump. The only source for this special pump would be ATI but the reply I got was “we did not produce the BM with the Eheim pump since a long time.” Well, great! Obviously I was going to change to other manufacturer that wouldn’t leave me with perfectly good skimmer body but no pump.

Anyways, enough ranting, let’s move to more positive things. First of all the performance of this modest sized skimmer is absolutely fantastic. I would say it removes at least twice as much organics compared to ATI Bubble Master 250. It is also very quiet and (needless to say) the fit and finish are first class.

Unlike some of the other skimmers I’ve owned, ATB doesn’t seem to be sensitive to small disturbances like placing your hand in aquarium. Naturally it will temporarily stop foaming if you add oils in some form into the aquarium but it is extremely fast to recover. Besides the raw performance, this must be one of the best features of the ATB conical skimmer. I feed invertebrates 4 times a day, about 30 minutes per feeding. The faster the skimmer can start to reduce the introduced organics after each feeding session the better. Previously, with the ATI skimmer, it would take anything up to one hour before the skimmer would start to skim again but with ATB Medium the time is measured in minutes. It is kind of strange to see skimmer to start producing foam that really shouldn’t “stick” and yet it shoots this mixture of oils and other such stuff into the collection cup in just a few minutes and then proceeds like nothing had happened except that the removal rate is much faster in the first 10-20 minutes after feeding. It is also very easy to monitor the performance of the skimmer because it has a drain; you can count the drip rate. At my setting the drip rate after feeding is 2 per second and as the water gets cleaner and cleaner it settles around one per 3 seconds.

I can sincerely recommend this protein skimmer for tanks around 200 gallons and larger. Be sure to check out ATB’s “econo” line also, I think you get mostly the same benefits at lower price. If the conical shape is responsible for the short recovery time after feeding like I suspect it is you might want to consider a cone as your next skimmer.

I think my tank is now ready for some new interesting animals from Mrutzek Meeresaquaristik scheduled to arrive this thursday

Related posts:

1. New ideas for reef aquarium filtration
2. NP-Biopellets, the story so far
3. Sometimes half full is more than full

Probably one of the most difficult decisions for a new hobbyist setting up a new reef tank is the selection of technical equipment. In the old days you were faced with options that really could make a big difference in your success as a starting reefkeeper but today many of those options are gone. For example, it is pretty universally accepted that you should use so called “stream” pumps for water movement and either T5 or metal halides for lighting. Almost all successful hobbyists use activated carbon and, if necessary, phosphate binders. You also don’t have to spend much time reading discussion forums before you realize that a sump with refugium is a good idea. And so on. To me all this has made captive coral reefs very easy to start and there really is a recipe for almost bullet proof reef tank. But one problem remains and that is, surprise surprise, selecting a efficient and not overly expensive protein skimmer.

The problem is that as of 2009 you will still find very bad skimmers in practically all shops, online and brick & mortar. There are severely overpriced brands and manufacturers who are much better at marketing than they are designing quality equipment or providing customer service. And when was the last time you saw an online discussion about skimmers where majority could agree on a set of recommended skimmers? Sure, there are sponsored forums where most people praise a certain brand but I wouldn’t call those very objective evaluations.

Criteria not to use

• Looks. Skimmers are not works of art. They are functional devices whose only goal is to remove as much organic matter as possible and bring the gas balance closer to equilibration with air. You don’t buy a Ferrari to do trucking.
• Price. In any given performance category it is very unlikely that neither the cheapest nor the most expensive skimmer is the best choice.
• Manufacturer’s tank size recommendation. Almost all manufacturers are extremely “optimistic” with their tank size recommendations and you should pay no attention to the maximum tank size that is recommended. Typically these are at least 2-4 times bigger than reality. You could use the the minimum as a starting point but even that is sometimes completely unrealistic. If you see very wide range between minimum and maximum you know that the manufacturer really don’t know much about skimmers.
• Size. A huge skimmer from the 90s is likely to be much weaker performer than a latest generation skimmer 1/5th of the size. The design and correctly balanced dimensions are much more important.
• Hype. Some skimmer manufacturers are extremely clever in their viral marketing. They are able to attract people who roam online forums praising the manufacturer and their products with little objectivity.
• Materials. This is related to the above point. I can’t understand why some people get so worked up with the type or color (!) of plastic used. Skimmers are placed in the sump or installed close to tank and they stay there – if you find yourself constantly moving and dropping the skimmer you are doing something wrong. In 20+ years of reefkeeping I have never heard of a case where skimmer body just broke while in use.

Criteria to use

• Performance. This is the most important criteria, obviously. Nothing else matters if the skimmer chosen is either too small or too powerful.
• Price. Most people do not have limitless budgets. And many people who do are smart enough not to pay too much for anything.
• Noise. Unless the skimmer is to be placed in a separate room with good sound proofing you will want a skimmer that doesn’t sound like a water processing plant.
• Number of DIY modifications. If you find a lot of small modifications people do to the skimmer to obtain better performance it is clear sign that the manufacturer does not know how to design a good skimmer. In general, a well designed skimmer performs best without any modifications.
• Reliability. Try to find out how reliable the pump used is. There are some high prized skimmers (for example Bubble King from Royal Exclusiv) that have constant problems with braking shafts. Others don’t start every time or the pump spins in wrong direction.
• Service. If the skimmer breaks you will want to get spare parts as fast as possible.  Unfortunately there are huge differences between manufacturers and their representatives. Some notoriously bad are Royal Exclusiv and ATI. You should get very good customer service from ATB, Tunze and Warner Marine, for example.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to find out about these aspects of skimmer models available to a aquarist. The only reliable way to sift through all options is to do a lot of googling and reading. Pay close attention to the photos. A good skimmer will produce thick and dark skimmate. You should also try to find how the tank looks; a beautiful and clean looking, well stocked reef aquarium with many fish is the best recommendation a skimmer can have.

I have some tips for you if you are new to online reefkeeping community:

Beware of fanboyz! There is this group of people (kids and childish adults) who want to like their skimmer so badly they get very angry when someone even mildly criticize their favorite skimmer model or manufacturer. Most of these people are very inexperienced and seem to be completely unable to form an objective opinion. Unfortunately they also quickly degrade any discussion to a level that doesn’t help anyone.

You will find a lot of people who offer their opinion about skimmers who have only used one model. By far the most useful opinions come from people who have had more than one skimmer in the same tank and who are not constantly changing their equipment or husbandry practices.

Everything is relative. After two very bad skimmers one slightly less bad seems like a great one. If you keep researching you will probably come up with a number of skimmers that you can place in a relative performance scale.

It is only human to think that your latest piece of equipment is better than the one it replaces.  Many people are very exited about their latest purchase and thus the initial reaction is likely to be better than the product really deserves. The most valuable opinion comes from the people who have used a skimmer for more than, say, 6 months.

Related posts:

1. Sometimes half full is more than full
2. Weapons of Nutrient Destruction: cone and pellets with sugar on top
3. It foams. I’m back.

Many people will tell you that skimming “wet” (adjusting skimmer so that removes more water together with organics) will result in more net export compared to “dry” setting. This is mostly based on the theory that there is less draining back of dirty water.There are some important points that are ignored, however. First of all, the foam head that is formed inside the riser tube is not really an inactive component. The concentrated foam functions as an elevator that can collect much more bacteria and other particulate organic matter than a more dilute solution. Furthermore, no reasonably designed skimmer will discharge the concentrated surface water. Instead, typically the water exists the skimmer from the bottom. I do not see how any significant number of surface active molecules could travel through high number of air bubbles and less concentrated water to exit from the bottom. After all, skimmers really work because they don’t do that.

But that’s just a bunch of theoretical mumbo-jumbo. There is an easy way to tell if your skimmer works better in dry or wet setting. Tune your skimmer to wet and let it skim for two days. Take a picture and clean the cup. Next tune it to produce very dark skimmate and let it skim the same amount of time. Now bring the water level inside the collection cup to the same level as it was with the wet setting and take a picture. Compare the pictures.

All skimmers I have owned export more organics with dry setting – sometimes much more. Here’s an example how concentrated dry skimmate is:

Skimmate produced by a (broken) ATI Bubble Master in 24 hrs

Filled with tap water, typical wet setting

Of course the ultimate test is how healthy and clean your tank looks. For me, skimming dry has always produced better results.

Related posts:

1. New ideas for reef aquarium filtration
2. Weapons of Nutrient Destruction: cone and pellets with sugar on top
3. Let it foam: Selecting a skimmer