shutdown and startup

[reefer]

i've had a busy day. i tried running a plenum for the last few months, cause the skimmer i was running was too big and couldn't produce enough foam to reach the collection cup. tho it would foam up, it wasn't enough, it would just paste the side of the tower with skimmate, which would dry up and fall back into the water column in the sump, and get redistributed. but.... it seems that even a plenum has a few drawbacks as well. cyano outbreaks being one of them, and the amount of time it takes to get one up and running. so spent the day removing it. i also cuaght my remaining 2 green chromis, scopas tang, and green mandarin, and returned them for some store credit. i am keeping the 6line wrasse and flame angelfish in the 75, with the hopes of finding a small foxface to take care of some bubble algea that is starting to become a problem. so now for the rest of the night i am mixing fresh batches of saltwater, to replace what i lost in the sandbed volume, and redoing my rockscape. hopefully, this will do what i need it to do. soo much fun....
:?

[dan]

are you running a fuge?maybe waist in your tank is low.

[reefer]

i'm in over my head it seems..... ;)
yes, i am running 2 fuges. but waste doesn't seeem to be a problem.... there was quite a bit of it collecting around the rocks.
8)

[Instar]

I'm running a cultured plenum, a UG and a sand bed in different tanks. Cyano has nothing to do with the plenum. Actually, I love the tank with the plenum in it! Its clean! And its loaded with life, fish, corals. Gotta love that. Its not that its perfect, but, you have to give a tank time for getting thru all the cycles and that takes a year at least. Algaes run on a seasonal-annual life cycle. The fuge can be a reason for little skimmate. Macro algae will consume the organics before the skimmer can get it.

[reefer]

well, i'm not willing to wait a year for it to finish setting up. the cyano was just going crazy in my tank. i was doing about 35+gl. a month in water changes, vacuuming it up, which was just too much of a chore to keep up with. i am hoping now with a lower fish load and a proper sized skimmer, that my problems will be lessened to a great degree.
8)