In the planning stages

[biomekanic]

Hey all,

I recently had an RTN event and lost a number of corals (but, happily, my purple goniopora only bleached and appears to be pulling through).

I have a lot more room in my tank than before, and was considering redoing it, and changing it over to a planted SW tank.

The plan was to build a coral bommie for the few soft corals I have left. The hard corals are all kinds that can live freely on the bottom. Brains, fungia, bubble, etc.
I would plant spartina in the back, turtle grass/widgeon in the middle with star grass up front. I've thought about using a piece or two of African driftwood to create simulated mangrove roots.

This won't be until spring, at the earliest.
Right now I have 8x54w T5 lighting the tank (it's a 75g).
The sandbed at that point will be 3 years old.
I'm considering salvaging the top 1 inch, and replacing the remaining 5 1/2 with 4" of eco-complete. This would give me the chance to replace the slowly disintigrating board under the sump, and to place a larger sump/refugium as well. I've thought of moving the remaining rock down there and doing it as an unlit environment to encourage pods and sponge growth.

I'll keep the CA reactor on their, the stony corals should take up enough.

I've also thought about adding 2 HOT Aqualight halide units, with either 15K or 20K bulbs.

Any thoughts would be appreciated, as well as additional ideas for plant life.

I have considered a mangrove, but there's not a lot of room for growth for it, and it would be directly under the lights, almost no seperation.

[kmk2307]

Sounds like a good plan. The driftwood may leach tannins into the water which are toxic to at least some invertebrates and protists. I would only re-use a very small amount of the sand from the current setup.

Good luck & post lots of pictures!
Kevin

[Samala]

On a whim, after you mentioned the driftwood a few weeks back, I stuck some african rootwood I had leftover from an old planted freshwater into a bucket with a powerhead and saltwater. Maybe 0.5lbs root into 5gallons. In two days the water was so dark with tannins you couldnt see to the bottom of this 16" bucket. I tossed in a bag of carbon and this didnt really make too much of a dent. The wood had been in a freshwater tank for three years prior to letting it dry out and until this trial. The bucket is still very very dark with tannins and replacing the carbon every three or four days has helped just a little.. not enough really. Its never gone back to being clear water.

I guess the pilings and old wood the aquarium used in the large setups had been sunk in saltwater for so long nearly all the tannins had been released. It does seem to be an accelerated process in saltwater. I'm going to keep track of how long it takes to get back to clear water with the rootwood I have going now.

Light sounds good, and reusing some of the old sand in the bottom part of the new substrate should be helpful. Eco-complete.. the sand for cichilds I imagine you'll use? I have been looking at that myself if I cant get the LFS to order Seachem's Gray Coast calcite, which is meant for saltwater, and has that nice dark color.

>Sarah

[biomekanic]

I'm not sure if I'll use the cichlid or the "standard" brand of E-C.

As for the driftwood... I'll be putting some in my FW tank at work, which I'll be setting up next month at work. I might get the wood then and get another 50g drum and treat it like I would LR being "cooked".

As for the tannins... would running ozone through the water as well as running purigen
Part of the reason for removing the current substrate is so I could get 2 corner Wave2K's for added current. With my current 6" - 7" sandbed it's to shallow for that.

[Samala]

Oooh wave2k's.. I'm jealous! :p I dont know if running ozone would help with the tannins.. a really good question. But you'd still have to filter it out somehow, yes? I dont have a skimmer on that bucket, I considered setting one up to see if it did more to remove the tannins. Maybe I'll try that tonight.

I'd forgotten there was a standard sand for EC.. its just that the cichlid stuff is intended to help with buffering. I guess if you arent concerned becuase of other things (ca-reactor or kalk or other) then its no big deal if you go normal or cichild EC. I think having a dark substrate is going to be really nice on a planted tank. Will likely bring out the color of the plants better than typical bright white sand.

I pulled the peice of rootwood a hour ago and set it out to dry.. it is practically bleached! :) Looks a lot whiter than the other peices I had that are nice dark brown. Interesting.

>Sarah

[00nothing]

sarah when u say african rootwood do u mean mopani cause if this is the stuff u are talking about i am not 100% sure it will really ever stop leaching, back in my piranha days i loved using that sstuff it would always give my water a slight yellow tinge and the piranhas loved it i had my tank up and runnning for about a yr and always ran carbon thru a magnum 350 canister jsut to keep the tank from going completly dark but even with the carbon the tank always had a yellow tinge from the mopani

I would think if u are going to add a driftwood to a planted tank your best bet would actually be the stuff that u can get premounted to pieces of slate u can always remove it from the slate ( u would want to jsut to get rid of the screw that usually holds it on) that stuff leaks next to nothing out in freshwater as it is actually a driftwood vs. the mopani which is barely cured at all before being sent to us, but the results could be very diffrent in saltwater