Runkeeper cut you guys out or something?

Lazy... thanks. :twitch:

Nice 5000 post btw.

Thanks man. I'm going to try 2 days rest between runs for now to let myself get over the flu totally.

Ryan I was out of line there just ribbin' ya. You're a force of nature buddy =) Those damn quads gotta get me some!

love the green door man, well done

I guess this thread is due for an update.. Tank is still in my living room holding water, fish and corals. That's all, carry on.

oh and here are some pics..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0379.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0386.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0395.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0406.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0422.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0418.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0428.jpg

DAMN IT Kien!! Now I want a Clown Tang too. Those angels are impressive, are they in the FOWLR? Are you still thinking of doing you know what with the FOWLR.......I sure hope not.

Yes the angels are in the "fowlr". Yes I am planning to shut down the 131g fowlr in the near future.

Noooooooooooo...........how big are the angels now?

they are actually not that big. The queen is the biggest at maybe 6 inches tip to tail? The King is 5" tip to tail.

Sweet pics them are beauties! And don't go leading people on. Those fish aren't going anywhere I know I made that clear =)

Well if you do shut it down, which Brett says your not allowed to, me might have to chat about the angels......but don't tell my wife I said that........she might kill me.

I am drooling looking at that queen angel

If and when you shut that system down, lemme know... I'll take the lot.

The vultures are circling I see.. :lol:

It isn't a matter of "if". It is a matter of "when".

I vote i'm the biggest vulture!!!! And then you wouldn't have to part out... cause i'd take everything! Think of how easy that would be..

I guess that would make things easy :-) Keep in mind though that I am not shutting the entire system down. Just the 131g "FOWLR" extension.

Yup! Thats all i'd want! Looking for a FOWLR

Cleaning the sump!
 

So after running this tank for about two and a half years, I figured it was about time I cleaned the sump..

Here's what I was up against.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_0446-1.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0444.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0442.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0440.jpg

I had planned to cleaned the sump a year ago but one thing led to another and well, here I am :neutral:

I started at 1pm today and finished up at around 9pm. :cry:

So the first thing I did was pull out all of the equipment. The skimmer, return pumps, heaters, probes, etc..

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0437.jpg

Although I had not cleaned the sump in over two years, I was actually better at staying on top of the skimmer maintenance. This is its second scrub down and vinegar bath in two years.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_0449-1.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_0448-1.jpg

Shiny!

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_0453-1.jpg

Holy tube worms batman!!! I hate that cleaning process.

There was a time when I would look into the sump and think, "oh gee, wow, look at all those feather dusters! That's so awesome that they are thriving. The tank must be doing good!"

Needless to say, I don't really feel that way anymore.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_0452-1.jpg

The Kent scraper and I spent some quality time today expunging those damn feather dusters. What kinda surprises me is that these things don't infest the display tank. I guess they are preyed upon by the fish before they reach plague proportions.

So anyway, some 8 hours later, about a dozen towels, four 5 buckets to hold wet equipment, two spent kent scrapers, my sump was shiny again.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_0455-1.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0457.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0459.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0460.jpg

One thing I realized while cleaning up the return pump is that I actually had not touched this thing in over two years. Pretty much since the day I plopped it into the sump and turned it on, it has ran like a champ! I know I should have taken it out more frequently but I never did and that didn't seem to bother it. It never once failed to restart during power outages and is still the quietest piece of equipment on my tank.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_0458-1.jpg

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0462.jpg

I'm not sure why I took a picture of my skimmate, but I did.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0466.jpg

uh ya.. I filled a 4L ice cream pale, TWICE with tubeworms/feather dusters. :lol:

oh, I have been running the dual bioPellet reactors for about a year now I guess. So far no ill effects (I don't think). I'm sure I have way more pellets than I need, but I don't have to top them off as frequently as I used to when I only had one reactor.

Sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon :razz:....looks like you just drove her off the lot tho

Almost inspires me to clean mine! Almost....

Interesting. The idea of the chunk of styrofoam holding what I assume to be probes is nifty! Not sure about the whole cleaning thing though. So now you're removed all of these nasty feather dusters & tube worms that were presumably consuming some amount of nutrients or whatever in your system. Are you not somewhat apprehensive about how that may affect it short term? Might be a bit of a shock removing all that matter at once? Something else in your system now has to take up the nutrient consuming duties all these little critters were performing? Sorry, tons of questions, but really interested in what your observation & perhaps water parameters will be for the next little while.

I finally pulled a canister filter off line on my system a little while ago (it developed a leak). I don't have a sump & was kind of assuming the canister would operate as a pseudo or mini sump for me so I had been running one since pretty much day one. In the beginning, being a noob, I had all the filter media in there, ceramic, different foam pads, the works. In the end I just ran a bag of carbon. Over the years the media baskets developed the same encrustation of wormy things & I let them be during my cleanings, thinking they were a good thing. I've always had varying amounts of hair algae in my system & don't sweat it too much provided it doesn't encroach some of the coral I have. Didn't notice a huge difference after taking the canister off line. It has receded in some areas, most noticeable in the flow regions where the canister used to return to the tank. However, it still persists in some areas & I need to remove it manually from time to time. The term nitrate factory is used often in discussions about canisters. My theory is, ok, so it may be or may become a nitrate factory. What happens when you remove it? Something else in your system has to take up the slack, like your live rock or sandbed. Otherwise, would not ammonia & nitrite build up to toxic levels? As long as there is livestock that needs to be fed, your system will produce nitrates, with or without a canister. Getting a little off topic, but yeah, some info on the effect of your cleaning efforts would be interesting.

+1

Ya, it has worked out quite well. Ghetto, but it does the job :-)

The thought had crossed my mind as I was harvesting gobs and gobs of tube worms and dusters. No doubt they will probably affect the system in some way. What that affect is remains to be seen (or not). Certainly there is the possibility that my tank will crash. Or maybe it'll just be very very unhappy with the lack of dusters.

I'm hoping that will be the skimmer, since the skimmer is really what's competing with the dusters for organic nutrients in the form of particulates, etc. I'm not so sure the worms and dusters directly consume nitrates and/or phosphates. If they do the BioPellets and GFO should be able to pick up the slack.

Speaking of parameters, before I performed the deep clean on the sump I did a gamut of tests as I realized I hadn't performed any tests since last August. I was prepared for some crazy bad numbers but it wasn't as bad as I feared.

Nitrates: 0.2 (Salifert)
Phosphates: 0.04 (Hana)
Alk: 7.7 (Hana)
Calc: 450 (Hana)
Mag: Untested (because I hate testing Mag).

It has been almost 24 hours now since the removal so I will do another set of tests after dinner and see if the numbers are any different.

Hey thanks for the detailed responses. I thought about the skimmer taking up slack of removed critters as well, plus your system is fairly large, so maybe just a little bump in the road until it balances out. There are hobbyists out there that go to some lengths to provide cryptic zones to cultivate all the stuff you removed, so I thought I'd throw my ideas out there.

My thinking on removing of the lattice of tubeworms is that it's sort of a paradox having them in there: they might be removing nutrients but they also trap detritus like crazy which probably builds up more nasties. Plus, if they eat, then they poop, so, they may not be all that beneficial in the end. Hard to say.

I know I look at the ones in my sump and think "ugh, need to do something about that" but I never do.

I know in my old tank I would sort of do the sump clean thing every year or two and things would look better for a while afterwards. But it was always a nasty ordeal too that would last all day. No wonder it gets procrastinated on!

I think those tubewormy things must like the dark (or less light anyways), I have quite a good population living in my overflow box which is shaded. They haven't migrated into my sump as I use a filter sock (yay another thing my filter sock is good for). Your shiny new sump and all its goodies make me want to clean my sump, but then my sump wasn't even that pretty to start with, I think it must be the sexy red skimmer. Gotta get me one of those :razz:

I think it may be more about flow........I know the big feather dusters dont do well in a lot of flow......I cant keep any feather dusters in the big tank cuz the flow blows their feathers off(not literally)f:lol:.....the small tank has significantly less flow and plenty of light and my dusters do well in there.....my sump too has a tonne of the wee ones.and is lit for the fuge all night ...leads me to assume that if the large dusters do fine in the light the small ones would too but, :noidea:

and there aint nuthin sexier than the red, white and goo:wink:

With the removal of the tube worms I am at least expecting a slight drop in Alk and Calc uptake :-) Those buggers must have consumed a lot of alk and calc. Damn freeloaders!

So after i cleaned out the sump I finished off my chores with a display tank scrub down. I actually liked scrubbing down the tank because afterwards everything appears as if it is in HD :lol:

Full Tank Shots

The South Face
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_0477-2.jpg

The North Face
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0474.jpg

The West Face
http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...i/IMG_0475.jpg

Not that anyone will notice but I changed up my aquascape a bit. I'm in the middle of battling these brown polyps that are infesting my live rock and are quickly reaching plague proportions. Luckly my rock structures are separated into three distinct structures so I didn't have to destroy my rock work too much. The most affected rock was my terraced zone (for those who have seen my tank in person). I dismounted the corals from those rocks and simply lifted the structure out of the tank and set them outside for a couple of days. After a couple of nights of freezing temperatures I thoroughly rinsed and scrubbed off all the debris that I could off of the rocks and rebuilt the structure in the tank. This area used to have two levels of terraces but after I placed the first level in I really liked the open swimming space above that used to be occupied by another piece of shelf rock with corals on it. My rock work was already pretty open but this openned it up even more and I liked it so I left it.

This is the first time I've done such a herculean cleaning job on my sump and man.. I don't ever want to do that again! I'm hoping that this experience will scare me into keeping a closer eye on the state of the sump and perform smaller cleanings. "Oh look I see a tube worm, MUST DESTORY NOW!!!"

opened up the very west end?....isnt that where your sunset monti was?.....whatcha do with the displaced corals?

Yes, I removed the upper terrace in the far west end. No, the sunset wasn't there, the sunset lives on top of the middle bonsai structure. It is rappidly out competing every coral on that structure actually.. I really should frag it, LOL. *waits for vultures*

I just rearranges the colonies and frags that were on that shelf onto the new lower shelf and the slab of tavertine that the lower shelf is pegged into. I moved some to other rocks as well.

Actually if you look at the South Face you can see the sunset smack dab in the middle of the picture on that upper shelf. It wants to own that shelf.

holy crap brochacho:surprise:......that thing went and got massive!!

Wow that's one shiny sump how's your back treating you!?

Tank looks great and I like the open end too.

Ya it is in the process of trying to devour a rainbow monti, strawberry fields monti, a purple pocci and a birds nest that lives near it.

Ah, from humble beginnings..

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2722/4...8740ba24_o.jpg

How's your sunset doing?