Michae52 Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 This forum hopefully will be useful to those who want a slower natural enviroment in there aquarium. Patrick (subsea) and myself have decided to both establish natural lagoon theme aquariums. Lagoons cover a wide and varied biotope. We are trying to establish these system with a minimal amount of equipment and maximum natural biological methods such as Timfish proposes and uses if I understand him correctly. Hopefully, this forum will also incorporate the methods which are employed by individuals that keep Seahorses and NPS corals. Macro algaes and Pat's critters will take the place of controllers, reactors,skimmers,and other tech pieces of equipment. Thank's Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 I'm interested in seeing what results this "lower-tech" approach achieves. I got to take a look at one of Patrick's setups last night similar to the one that will be given away at the April meeting. For people who love movement (and like damsels?!?) it should be very interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 http://www.chucksaddiction.com/ This is a very good series of how much everthing is interconnected. It is a beautifully complex world and I love it. For me, instead of getting into the micro, I had to understand things in the big picture then come back to the micro and play. In this series, there is a section on "collecting at the coast". We will have fun with this. Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 http://www.fishchann...coral-reef.aspx This series by Richard Harker is similiar to Chuck's Addiction. I will be blunt about these techniques. If you want to complicate your life: !. mix and match without study of what you are doing. 2. put everything you like in one tank. 3. expect natural biology to process all the food that gets dumped into a tank because we want it our way, right away. Study up on what you want to do. Then decide how to accomplish that goal. Knowledge is power. Most important is to excercise patience and moderation. Set back and chill. Make sure that you have a good time doing it. Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+o0zarkawater Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 So what exactly do you consider a "Lagoon" tank? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michae52 Posted March 2, 2012 Author Share Posted March 2, 2012 Actually, my tank will be based on the leeward side of a reef. This is due to fact that I am using live rock. The area behind the reef proper and the reef flat. Patrick will have his tanks based futher in. Probably inside the reef flat area. How he is setting up I do not know all the particulars. I intend on having a concentration of inverts with smaller fish present but not plainly in sight. What is going to make it really hard is that I only have 20 inches in depth (front to back) to work with Patrick only has 12. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 http://www.chucksaddiction.com/ A lagoon is a sheltered shallow area that favors seagrasses. Chuck lives in the Philipeans and describes the different zones of the land to the reef. I am not going to be a perfectionist and duplicate an exact zone. I will create an ecosystem that requires the least amount of equipment. I prefer biology to do the work of equipment. I am tired of this being an expensive hobby. It does not need to be that way. I enjoy the fans of different colors, weather they be Sea Stars or Gorgonians. The feather dusters and scallops are one of my favorites. To accomplish creating the enviroment required for these complex life forms is diversity in the food web. Multiple nutriant recycling paths is the goal of a healthy tank that feeds its inhabitants. I like micro fauna and fana in the sandbed. You can see the stuff moving about. There are a lot of different color worms and feathers in these mature sand beds. As these inhabitants of the sandbed grow, through their place in the food chain they consume nitrate and phosphate into their biomass. So instead of nusiance micro algae consuming nitrate and phosphates, the worms consume it. In the normal wild reef, the nutriant chemistry favors algaes and if were not for abundant herbivores most coral reefs would be algae dominated. For this same reason, algae consumers need be brought into a natural reef keeping tank as soon as possible. For me, this is usually two weeks. I favor snails and pods at this time. Diatom blooms and successfive progressions of different blooms are normal and healthy. Allow pods and snails to multiply in abundance with no predators. After bacteria and detrivores comes the stuff that everyone likes to see, filter feeding invertebrae: feathers, clams, anemoneas, sponges and my favorite seagrasses. In these seagrass communities, normal progression would have one dominant species, however, in my tank I will prevent this dominate progression and maintain my interpetation of a Lagoon biotheme. Just like everyone's reef tank, it will be an expression of the tank owner. In my case, I will do this with a 30" deep tank that is 4' long and 2' from front to back. My dominant theme will be to keep less demanding top of the food chain predators. If I have fish for the first year it will only be herbivores that assist the CUC. For some, their lagoon tank will have many fish. Just as in reef tanks, the variations are unlimited. Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 So what exactly do you consider a "Lagoon" tank? After your question, I thought more about it and I realized that I have been maintaining a high energy lagoon biotheme for three years. My 75G seaweed growout tank fits that discription. Duing the summer, it got blistering sunlight requiring much evaporative cooling. I even resorted to mist sprinkling around my poarch at the rate of 1 GPM. The circulation for the "Vertical Loop Current" comes from one Mag 18 which transfers water from the refugiums to two eductors which amplify circulation by 300%, some manufactors claim 500%. In any case it is brisk at the least. When this circulation reached steady state, it was an eliptical circle in the vertical plane. When the seaweed biomass increased, I would find seaweed piled up at different locations in this current. After studying on the facts, I increased circulation on the bottom return loop of the "Vertical Loop Current". Initially, this was done with a Maxi-Jet 1200. Once I realized the efficiency of this arrangement, I put in an external pump with a closed loop using a Mag 7 to drive one eductor. After removing all powerheads, I saw a more balanced speed in the different sides of the current. Instead of overdriving with more pumps, I used system natural dnamics to achieve the most efficiant use of power. By slowing the current down the mollies have achieved a natural feeding response to the available micro algae, therby making my macro algae a more marketable product. In effect, we do this in our specialty tanks. As Michael said on the first post to this thread, lagoons represent a diverse range of biotypes. Pick your flavor. Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 To complete the picture of my 75G Lagoon High Energy Seaweed Growout tank, I will say that I had fun hodge podging critters from fresh water to full salt water. The different color sailfin mollies are gorgeous in my humble opinion. The mollies were not in the least bit intimidated by the fifty Blue Yellow Tail Damsels. I have 20 mollies of different colors with third and fourth generation in salt water on the Black Mollies which I started two years ago. The light for this tank is 1000W MH at 6500K. It is awesome on the blue and yellow of the damsels. It is some kind of a hot box, if it was inside it would be a substantial load on the air conditioning system. Initially this light was 12" from water surface in an 18" deep tank. The bottom was at 200 PAR and the top of the water column was at 900 PAR. The seaweed started growing so fast that I was harvesting between 8-10 pounds a week. If you estimate 40 pounds a month at $40 per pound then that tank which used $42 a month worth of electricity returned on investment $1600 gross with $40 worth of energy used. This intense light has fueled excessive growth on all algaes including nuisance hair and others. I have raised the fixture to 24" above water and introduce mollies as the perfect herbivore to perform this maintenance. So Voila, I have a high energy lagoon tank with much light and many fish with abundant micro and macro algae. It is so neat to watch the fish speed up to get in sync with the "seaweed current", then they move into the interior and get a few mouthfulls of hair algae before escaping the increased upward velocity brought about by the "curtain of air" bubbles rising to the source of the "Vertical Loop Current". Michael, I have a Blue YellowTail Damsel in the second inground growout tank from the above system. Its blue color is very visable when viewed from above in daylight. Should we name them "My Lucky Orange" and "Mr Lucky Blue". It does not resonate with me. Maybe some of the music majors or someone who speaks any of the romance languages, or perhapes one of the artsy types. I do not think two crusty oilfield hands should take on the task of providing names. Perhapes, it would be the a prize for the best names for these epic adventurors. Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Felix means lucky, a Roman emperor took it as a nickname because he thought he was blessed by the goddess Fortuna. Best name for a lucky fish I could think of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 I like it, it is very punny, but I will not be on the committe to choose. Less political for me. Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michae52 Posted March 3, 2012 Author Share Posted March 3, 2012 Is that like Felix the cat. Cat=fish get it. Cat eat's fish. fish not so lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Grog Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 Yeah, that was the one negative for Felix. Felix has a cat association in modern culture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michae52 Posted March 4, 2012 Author Share Posted March 4, 2012 So what exactly do you consider a "Lagoon" tank? After your question, I thought more about it and I realized that I have been maintaining a high energy lagoon biotheme for three years. My 75G seaweed growout tank fits that discription. Duing the summer, it got blistering sunlight requiring much evaporative cooling. I even resorted to mist sprinkling around my poarch at the rate of 1 GPM. The circulation for the "Vertical Loop Current" comes from one Mag 18 which transfers water from the refugiums to two eductors which amplify circulation by 300%, some manufactors claim 500%. In any case it is brisk at the least. When this circulation reached steady state, it was an eliptical circle in the vertical plane. When the seaweed biomass increased, I would find seaweed piled up at different locations in this current. After studying on the facts, I increased circulation on the bottom return loop of the "Vertical Loop Current". Initially, this was done with a Maxi-Jet 1200. Once I realized the efficiency of this arrangement, I put in an external pump with a closed loop using a Mag 7 to drive one eductor. After removing all powerheads, I saw a more balanced speed in the different sides of the current. Instead of overdriving with more pumps, I used system natural dnamics to achieve the most efficiant use of power. By slowing the current down the mollies have achieved a natural feeding response to the available micro algae, therby making my macro algae a more marketable product. In effect, we do this in our specialty tanks. As Michael said on the first post to this thread, lagoons represent a diverse range of biotypes. Pick your flavor. Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsea Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 Mike, thanks for the picture of my seaweed growout tank. In essence, this is the energy that I want in my 135G lagoon, only slower. If you notice how the sand is piled up on the left side of the tank. The current keeps it there. It is in this increased depth, that I want to plant seagrasses. With there intensive root developement and high nutriant requirements this is the catch basin for nutriant enrichment to the plants. The bottom return loop of the vertical loop current will disipate its energy amongst the reeds depositing sediments. The rest of the tank will be open substrate. Six square feet of bottom going from 4" deep to 12" deep in a 36" length. This substrate will be Caribsea Special Reef Grade arrogonite. The two square feet on the deep end will start out with 6" of fresh water substrate high in iron and 6" of Caribsea Crushed Coral at 2mm-5mm. I went with the larger substrate as I felt it would remain in place as energy from current is disappated in reed beds. I may use the above model for a longer mode in high energy. Things have gone astray with my contractor for the 20K gallon tanks and I had some delays. I would rather work some time with the Maraculture Research Lab before I finalize my design of these large containments systems. I am thinking of holding my 135G lagoon in the house in an extended seaweed growing mode. This would also provide nutriant recycling between sandbed detrivores and macroalgae production. Instead of growing Red Ogo to eat, I may focus on Red Titan to propagate. To answer a queston earlier by KevinB, most macro algae are propagated by fragmentation, prune it. Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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