Skimmerless?? Anyone??Miracle Mud??
 

Just wondering if anyone is running a skimmerless reef, if so, what are your thoughts. I've been considering running a sump with miracle mud and some macro algaes/sea weeds. I've not run into much subjective information on mineral mud, just the stuff in magazines and advertisment. Anyone have real experience with this stuff??

Doug

hey doug, im planing to toss my refugium for a big skimmer. but thats me! I just find that the refugiums have never done much for me. As steve reminded me pod piles work great for inside the tank.

hey i'm running skimmerless and growing Calup and different algae in the tank .i'm doing 5 gal water changes every week. i like it
i might swtich to a refugium and toss the aglae in the refugium instead of thetank..

Mike

Ive done it with reverse sump lighting, I didnt use a skimmer, I didnt do any water changes except for fresh water top up and I only added salt when the salinity dropped over a 4-6 month period(about a cup or 2), it was on a 77 gallon tank with 160W of NO lighting, sump had mineral mud, and calurpea, and liverock, tank had 90 lbs of liverock, a couple dozen corals of all different varities, 1 regal, 2 bangii cardinals, 1 colored bubbletip anemone, 120 or so cleaners of various varities, 2 goldstripe maroons, and a school of chromis. everything did very well, not the best for sps, but it worked great, I also added salifert all in one and iodine ocasianally. I never changed the bulbs and am infact still using them on a different tank, the bulbs were used for 4 years on that reef, I only took it down because I moved, it cost me about $150 a year to maintain it, I used tap water with conditioner.

This tank was setup to see how basically a tank could be maintained, it always looked beautiful.... I dont recommend anyone do this, but it did work in my situation very well

Uh ohhh. I know he's coming! Bob? :lol:

Walter

:lol:

I have a jumbo skimmer. Live sand in half my sump and miracle mud in the other half. If I was to have any comment on the mud it would be, it costs to much. Can't really say if it does any good or not. There are no bad effects from it. IMO I would give it a pass. But who know's, deep sand beds when I started mine were the rage now they are on the out.
Now that I can see this post is no help to you, good luck!

Dave

Thanks for the replies, I used mineral mud in my refugium last time and found my calupera grew rapidly. I'm thinking though of not using calupera so much as seaweeds... I've got tons of research to do, got the tank ordered, I'm making some of my own live rock, I'll probably build a 33 gallon sump but if I decide not to go with the refugium then I'll make my 45/55 acrylic tank into a sump.

Doug

Isn't MM just sand with extra iron? I'm not sure. Is the point of it just to make your macros grow faster? Wouldn't that mean you're pruning more often?

Skimmerless is fine, it depends on the context and your tank management style/practises. I've done with and without. Generally speaking I like a skimmer better, but I find that going with "no skimmer" is less annoying than, say, going with a "skimmer that sucks."

I sure wish we could get eelgrass or turtlegrass from somewhere up here. AFAIK none of the Canadian vendors have any, if you find any please please please please let me know about it, I've been aching to try some for years and years now. I almost bought some last time I was in the U.S. but I chickened out at the last moment because I wasn't sure if it was CITES or not.

... Just noticed you said seaweeds instead of seagrasses. What kind of seaweeds did you mean? "Seaweed" to me means "macroalgae" (of which caulerpa is a type, of course). There are other kinds of macros though. Halimeda, Chaetomorpha, Gracillaria, etc. etc. Chaetomorpha (spaghetti algae .... I sometimes call it brillo pad or "green pubes" [since that's what it kinda looks like] :redface: ) is a nice one not prone to sporulation like Caulerpa and Halimeda are (only thing is it tends to be a bit of a slow grower unless under BRIGHT lighting like halides).

You can find an anaylsis of Miracle Mud here:

http://www.inlandreef.com/Testing/MManalysis.html

and a few lengthy discussions here:

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewforum.ph...6ea1de83c4177f

:smile:

Mitch