LR and flow

[bluwtr]

I have roughly 70's of LR in my tank. Since the tank is a 55g it is kind of narrow front to back and as such, I basically built a wall of rock. I have three power heads running; two 750gph and one 250gph. Also, have the return from the sump going. I've moved rock a couple of times to try to get more water flow through the rock and system, but I still have HUGE pockets of detritus accumulating. It's on rocks and the sand. It is so bad in spots it looks like grey fuzz on stuff. I feed pellets once a day for about two minutes giving the fish time to eat. I feed my corals and duster Oyster Feast about every three days and about every two weeks live plankton that I get from work. When I do WC's I try to vacuum as much as I can and I try to blast with a turkey baster to suspend it and hope it goes to the sump. In the attached pic, you can see the water flow (red arrows). The small powerhead blows along the back and bottom to try to move junk from back there. You can see how the other two blow. The green dots are just some of the areas where this crap is building up. It is starting to cause hair algae to grow plus dinos (DAMNIT!!!) I'm dosing maintenance dosing on AZ-NO3, running GAC and GFO in reactor, have Chaeto and LR in the sump. I don't know what else to do! The only solution I can come up with is to pull all of my rock--rinse it in clean water, vacuum the sand like crazy, and then restack my rock and try to open it up more. I really don't want to do that though because I'm afraid it will kill a lot of my critters. HELP!!!

Sorry for the long post. Any suggestions and ideas are greatly appreciated.

[Redfish]

The live rock in my 125g is set up a lot like yours and I tend to have the same problem as you do. What I have done to help clean up the rock is to use a smaller hose when I am siphoning the water out of the tank during a water change. The smaller hose allows me more time to get to the 27 gallons of water I take out of the tank during the water change and gives me more time to clean the rock. The down side to doing this, JMO here, by cleaning the rock this way, I maybe sucking up a lot of pods that are on and in the LR, this also gives you more time to suck up a cleaner shrimp also and have you wife beat you on the back of your head. The only answers to OUR problem that I can come up with are: Take half of the LR out of our Display tanks and place it in the sump and then add another power head to the DT if you feel you still need more water movement in the DT after you have taken the LR and moved it to your sump. The other answer is to buy some smaller power heads and mount them to the back wall of the DT behind your live rock, this way you are getting more water flow thru your LR wall. This has a down side also, you have more wires running into your DT which won't look real pretty, unless you are using Vortech MP10 power heads, also the smaller power heads placed lower in your tank to get that flow thru the LR may cause a sand storm in your tank. Something else to think about which I have done is to place a power head in my sump to keep all of the nasty stuff moving around and give my skimmer a chance to pull it out of the tank, this seems to be working out pretty well. I am only taking half of my advice though, I pulled just under a third of my LR out of the DT and that seems to be helping. When I get the new sump for the tank upgrade I am planing, I will have a large return chamber in the sump and I will place as much LR in there as I can so that I can go with a some what minimal amount of LR in the DT.

[Redfish]

A few more things you can do is to get a sand Sifter fish and a Rock Blenny, these will help keep the detritus moving around and help get it out of you tank. you can also get a turkey baster and spray the LR with water and it will do the same as the sand sifter and the Blenny do. The bottom line is that this will be an ongoing battle as long as you have that much LR in your tank unless you add power heads to move it around.

[Gerwin]

I have roughly 70's of LR in my tank. Since the tank is a 55g it is kind of narrow front to back and as such, I basically built a wall of rock. I have three power heads running; two 750gph and one 250gph. Also, have the return from the sump going. I've moved rock a couple of times to try to get more water flow through the rock and system, but I still have HUGE pockets of detritus accumulating. It's on rocks and the sand. It is so bad in spots it looks like grey fuzz on stuff. I feed pellets once a day for about two minutes giving the fish time to eat. I feed my corals and duster Oyster Feast about every three days and about every two weeks live plankton that I get from work. When I do WC's I try to vacuum as much as I can and I try to blast with a turkey baster to suspend it and hope it goes to the sump. In the attached pic, you can see the water flow (red arrows). The small powerhead blows along the back and bottom to try to move junk from back there. You can see how the other two blow. The green dots are just some of the areas where this crap is building up. It is starting to cause hair algae to grow plus dinos (DAMNIT!!!) I'm dosing maintenance dosing on AZ-NO3, running GAC and GFO in reactor, have Chaeto and LR in the sump. I don't know what else to do! The only solution I can come up with is to pull all of my rock--rinse it in clean water, vacuum the sand like crazy, and then restack my rock and try to open it up more. I really don't want to do that though because I'm afraid it will kill a lot of my critters. HELP!!!

Sorry for the long post. Any suggestions and ideas are greatly appreciated.

replace 250 with 1050 or 1450 and put on a timer, when the powerheads run 24/7 there is going to be some areas that just dont get the flow and the mulm will find it. (biggest advantage of wavemakers), cut back on oyster feast to once a week and maybe cut out the live plankton all together. AND MOST OF ALL DONT PANIC stay calm and use the brain. It takes input to produce the output.... also there are many creatures that are just eating away at the rock at night and producing great piles of dust, if this is not blowing off easy by the current then you a) do not have enough b) rock rock structure is blocking the currents and creating the pockets. Suck it off with a hose as suggested, I mean it should not take more than a couple gallons to hit the pockets and then use your gravel vac in the sand(top 25%) to keep the bulk of it under control, and taking it from a different angle you may need to keep a sock on the drain as your detritus maybe a result of just being pulled through sump and blown onto the rocks.

See ya at the shop

[bluwtr]

I think my solution is a combo of all the suggestions and thoughts. The small PH keeps the edge along the back of the tank pretty clean now that I moved it. It's the front sides that are the problem areas. I honestly don't think it's my feeding because I'm very conscious of amounts. I feed very little just for those reasons. Funny thing about the live plankton is it gets pulled from the tank very quickly. I feed Tuesday evening and emptied my skimmer cup yesterday (it was due). It had a green tint to it.

I think my #1 problem is water flow. I really believe I need to open my rock up more. Unfortunately I can't add to my sump because of its size, so I think I'm going to have to restack it and make more open areas. I did add a "filter sock" to my drain. It's one of the micro media bags that I was using to run my GFO and GAC before I got my reactor. If I do pull rock to rearrange it should I rinse it in fresh SW to help clean it or just say the hell with it and let it rock? HA, I made a pun!!!!

[Redfish]

I think this is the reason they came up with closed loop systems. I see tanks builds on line all of the time where they have closed loop pipes on the bottom of the DT and the lines come into the tank right in the middle of the live rock.

[bluwtr]

NOW they tell us!!! LOL!

[Gerwin]

If I do pull rock to rearrange it should I rinse it in fresh SW to help clean it or just say the hell with it and let it rock? HA, I made a pun!!!!

I would scrub the ones with hair algae for sure

closed loops are mainly just a way to eliminate having pwerheads all over you tank, think of it more as a clean look than anything else, but you will see by looking how important flow is to those folks as they are driven by large pumps with multiple ports and often they are tied into wave making devices. Its all about the turbulence

[Dirtypirate]

yeah i had the same problem with my tank. So i went to my LFS and bought another bigger and stronger PH and tried different positions in my tank and it has worked itself out. And i also bought some inverts to help with sturring up the substrate and cleaning the LR.

[bluwtr]

I moved a little of my rock, and moved my two large PH's so that they blow from back corners to middle front. The algae is gone now. I didn't feed for about 5 days and I did a dark period for a couple. Tank is looking pretty good now. In fact, my Chaeto is shrinking due to lack of nutrients.