Need help with ecosytem setup

[DaveR]

ynot -

Yep, I have the Ecosystems 2410 sump. It was a tight fit under the stand (the tank is 36x18x20 I believe), but everything worked out great. One thing I learned was to have the discharge pipe from under the tank (from the overflow) dump the water above and on to the bioballs. Originally, I had it dumping about 2 inches into the balls. It cut down the water noise, but the caulerpa didn't seem to be growing very well. I guess that stands to reason with what others said about the balls being nitrate factories.

It should be noted that I do occasionally run a skimmer, about once a week until the cup fills. It fills slow, but it does fill up. I do feed a bit heavy though with the fish in the tank and the always hungry bubble coral.

 

[blindsey]

I have a 3 month old 120 gal tank with a 3612
(36 x 12 x 18) w/ 30 lbs of MM & 5 pounds of GARF Grunge and 3 species of Calerpa rubberbanded to rocks and added to refugium 2 weeks ago, which is already rooting. I am not skimming. My water chemestry is great so far with no yellowing and no water changes. I used Right Now bacteria to cycle the tank in 3 days (yep, 3 days). And I use Algone to keep algae growth down. I have a very small bloom of brown algae occassionally which I wipe from glass. I added fish the first week. I have 5 Green Chromis, 2 Yellowtail Blue Damsels, 2 False Percula Clowns, 1 Flame Angel, 1 Firefish, 1 Yellow Watchman Goby, 1 Scooter Dragonet, 1 Lawnmower Blenny, 2 Royal Grammas, 2 Neon Blue Cleaner Gobies, 3 Pajama Cardinals, and 2 Yellow Clown Gobies. Also, 4 brittle stars, 1 sand stirring star, 1 Clam, 1 Flame Scallop, 4 cleaner shrimp, 1 pistol shrimp (matched with the Watchman Goby), 2 dozen snails of various species, 2 dozen hermits of various species, 3 Mythrax crabs, feather dusters, several soft corals, 4 hard corals, 215 pounds of live rock, 15 pounds of GARF Grunge, 10 pounds of live sand, 60 pounds of sand, plus some Halmedia macroalgae. I am getting a fair amount of foam where my water is dropping down into the first chamber in my EcoSystem and considering doing a little skimming. I have a 1.5"-3.0" sand bed, no problems that I know of. I am probably overfeeding as I am new to all of this. But from a rookie's point of view, the EcoSystem is working great so far!

As my friend Paul just emailed to me:

"There are a lot of ways to do
this stuff, and I think the EcoSystem is an easy to implement way that
works. It's not any more expensive, and often less expensive in the long run
than a lot of systems you can get. Avoiding skimmers in my opinion is a
great idea, because you avoid removing plankton, and you avoid stripping
trace elements as well. The systems I have set up so far are low
maintenance, don't seem to need additional stuff after you get the basic
setup, and the different aspects make good sense to me."