Heading back into the hobby

[Bilk]

after more than a ten year absence. I really miss the rewarding feeling of maintaining a healthy reef and the relaxing calm of watching it after a hard day at work.

I see there have been some changes in the hobby. Most seem to be in the lighting area. Better, higher kelvin lamps and well, the use of LED seems to be the state of the art or at least the cutting edge. They didn't exist for the reef aquarist when I last participated in this.

One question I do have, it was a new idea presented by Julian Sprung, I believe, about 15 years ago or so, was the idea of employing false bottom to create a space below a thick sand bed. This created an anaerobic zone to control the nitrate cycle. Is this still employed or was it found to be faulty? I had used that method in my last 75g setup. Seemed to work well, maintaining very low nitrate levels in the water column, but not sure if there were longevity issues. Were toxins found to be leaching from this anaerobic area after time?

Anyone have any insight into this? Also, do I need to get my head examined before jumping back in again? LOL

 

[prattreef]

Mr. Blik. Welcome back. You are referring to a plenum system or Jaubert method. This method was not shown to be faulty, but it has largely fallen out of favor and few run them these days. I think most found that similar results could be achieved with less involved system designs and simply running and maintaining a sandbed without the plenum.

 

[NYreefNoob]

welcome back to the madness and alot more then lighting has changed in 10 years, actually just about everything has change for a improvement on the largest part

 

[Bilk]

Ah yes a plenum. It wasn't complicated to set up. Just some eggcrate supported by a few short lengths of pvc pipe and a mesh placed over that to prevent the sand from falling thru.

So this went the way of the horse and buggy. OK. I guess skimmer design has varied and been refined as well. I alos thought there were some not running skimmers any longer, which I found to be somewhat surprising. But maybe that wasn't accurate as I do see many here doing so.

Back in the day, I designed and built all of my equipment, but have no desire to do so now. I'll do my homework and see what the better options are for what I intend to build and maintain. I'm thinking for now, maybe 35gal - 55gal range with a sump of about 15gal or so. Maybe larger just to enable me to have some workable space to house equipment and for increased overall volume.

Looking forward to sharing this adventure with you guys.