Does anyone want to learn about the Hiatt system?

Man my bad, The are a variation of barrier reef chromis. I was sure they were a juvinile of some sort of angles. I saw a few of them in the scuba diving book when I was diving phillipine.

Oh well still good looking fishes.

Feed lot of food to these fishes. Still no Nitrate and no Phospate.

Ph was a bit low alk also low. Dose bicrabonate from BRS.

Could be CO2 from RN bacteria resperation.

Ordering a new set of test kit.. Hoping to get better reading.

I size my filter media to half of the recommened amount for a reef aquarium. I add fishes 3 hours after the water are mixed and filter went on line. Water a little cloudy at first because I mix the salt and RN bacteria in the tank but the fishes were doing great. The water is crystal clear after 24 hours. I check all parameter and everything is in range for a reef aquarium. I was a little concern on the first 24 hours because there were no trace of Nitrate or Phospate. I want some Nitrate and Phospate in the tank so that the SPS can live. It have been three days now and the Nitrate is still zero, but I see a trace of Phospate the reading show 0.09 using the Hanna Digital Phospate reader.

PH/cal/alk are in parameter for reef.

Hopping to see more nitrate and phospate on my next test. Will add more tribase if needed to keep nitrate and phospate in a low range for SPS.

Finding a balance is tricky is due to how efficient and the flow rate of your filter setup.

Also added water heater and set it to 81F.

Test the water again and Phoshpate is down to 0.03 and nitrate up to 5.

PH/ALK in range and Cal is low. Mixing up some cal supplement and add it in tonight.

Also added more fish and corals.

Everything looks good so far. Will report back into two weeks. Hope P/N stabalized by then.

Added lot of SPS and LPS and 10 more fish to thank. Feed the fish and coral a lot.

ALK and Cal is in the high range.

Phospate 0.23 ppm Nitrate 0.5 ppm

Nitrate is a bit low and phospate is a bit high. Need to increase Nitrate so that the bacteria can use it to take out the phospate due to 1 to 4 p to n ratio of how the bacteria consume it.

Did not do any test this weekend... Just glue some of the SPS onto the rock.

Got some bad luck with Petco yellow tang. It die. The fish got stung by corals when the they try to catch the fish. One side of the Tang got large bump on it with on an hour after an hour of release into the tank. It die the next day. Other fishes purchase are doing great. Could not return to Petco. Lesson learn, never by fish from vendor tank that have lot of corals.

Test my water last night Phospate 0.23 ppm and Nirate 0.5 ppm.

Coral doing good... I feed the coral with coral chilli and I am going to add supplement may be the seachem fuel. That should increase growth and color.

No algae in the system... Saw a little bit of cyno on the sand in the low flow area. I manually stired up the sand to get what in the sand into the filter.

Saw some hair algae on the old gravel that came from an old tank. I wash it really well, Guess there are still N and P on it. No algae on the eco rock from BRS or the glass.

Re-configuer the Tunze placement and set it to pulse and the tank got some wave movement.

Some of plate corals and zoo I rescue from my fish only tank start to recover and seem to be growing.

Don't want to jump the gun by adding more Tribase Carbon. Need to see if N and P get a bit higher.

Will try to post some picture soon.

Thing look kind of stress... My light stay on 24X7 almost a week. I was testing the light and forgot to turn the control to auto.

It turn off last night and those coral should have some rest.

I am getting two mex turbos for the tank to see if it can keep the little hair algae start to grow on the gravel.

I also order some sechem fuel to boost growth. I am also planning to add 1/4 lb of tribase carbon this week and a water change.

Did not test for N/P last night.... Was too tire from work.

Added 1/2 lb more of Tribase carbon and a pinch of RN bacteria into the filter over the weekend. Change out the hayward particulate filter.
Change 5gl of water as part of the back flush of the media tank.

Added 12 more fish into the tank also 1 mex turbo.

Phospate tested 0.23 ppm and Nitrate 5ppm. Feed a lot of food to fish and coral.

Will see how the P/N will be in a few days.
Change 5gl of water.

Start to get algae on the back wall.

Could be due to water change and back flush of the bio filter too soon. Will check water parameter tonight.

Getting two more used Tunze 6100 to increase circulation to combat algae.

Hoping RN bacteria will kick in and consume the N and P.

Want to bring P down to 0.1 ppm and N down to 0.5 ppm....

Don't want to kill all the algae just weeken it so that the snail can do it work. If all the algae die then the algae in the coral will also die. Don't want that to happen.

Test result for today.
Nitrate 0.5 ppm and Phospate 0.105 ppm

Adding more 1/2 Tribase work. Hope it stay in that zone.

Cal is normal. Alk is a bit low.. Will do a more precise titration using seachem test kit to see if I really need to add more alk buffer.

Going to get more mex turbo tomorrow.

Feed the fishes like crazy and feed coral with chilli each night.

Added two tsp full of seachem fuel. Going to follow their instruction and see if the coral growth and coloration as they said in the ad.

Got two more clusters of Zoo from my fish only tank and put it in two days ago. They are start to perk up.

The zoo I rescure three weeks ago are expanding very big.... The plates corals are expanding also...

I ajust the 250W MH lighting to stay on from 6 hour to 7 hours. Hope this will help with the growth and coloration. The PC stay on for 12 hours. Moon light stay on for 4 hours.

Test result for today.

Nitrate 0ppm and Phospate 0.11ppm

Cal 440 and alk is low

Hope nitrate come backup...

Added Alk buffer last night and added Cal this morning. Alk should be in range of 3 and cal should be 450....

Alk and cal goes down mean that coral is taking up the stuff mean coral growth.

Need to drive Phospate down.... Need to find a nitrate source to drive phospate down. (Bacteria consume nitrate/phospate at 4/1)

If not, might have to use GFO reactor. Don't want to do that... The extra phospate have to have come from the old gravel/sand from my old tank. Just have to feed more of low phospate food to fish.

Did not check on P and N today.

Algae and cyno is going away. Still feed coral and fish daily.. If cyno and algae gone away... I either have to increase feeding of coral and fish or just remove some of the tribase out of the reactor. The coral does show sign of better growth since dosing with seachem Fuel, but not 100% sure..Could just be the coral take time to react to the new environment.

Since grow is a sure. I am looking to get more color. I have started to exten lighting period of my Halide.

Also try to reduce nitrate and phospate by controlling amount of feeding and tribase carbon can reduce algae in the coral flesh and get the coral skin to react to the extra light without killing it (ie coral tanning) Could be tricky.... Nice tan or death....Oh my tricky.

Hope you guys don't mind I am using this as my tank note/diary.

I will make some messurement tonight and post.

Got some problem with the green stag horn. Got to figure what is wrong with them. PE is not good.

Could be flow and light problem.

Phospate: 0.09 ppm Nitrate 0.2ppm
Alk 3, Mag 1100, Cal 440

Decide to raise Alk up to 4, Mag to 1200, Cal 500.

Feed the fish with home made fish food and corals with chillie.
Planning to get some oyster and harvest it egg to feed to the coral.

Added 2 tsp of seachem fuel.

All corals are doing great... Stag horn have a little problem... Hope it recover.

Got a couple of used tunze 6100 comming in a couple of days. That should increase the water movement.

Why is your alk so low and calcium so high ? Or whaz that a typo ?

ALK IS in meq/l...

I think the recommended meq/l for alk is around 4 or 5 from seachem test kit.

I hope that is correct.

One thing about this filter system is that the bacteria take in O2 and output CO2 ... I have the return line from the filter shooting the water on top of the tank to discipate the CO2, but still I am constantly trying to keep alk up... Might need to agitate the surface water more to get more gas exchange.

Why not set up an area where the output of the filter can go and add an air pump to it to force lots of good air into it. That would oxygenate the saturated water and help manage your PH better.

Either that or what about putting the output pipe into a fuge and letting some macros gobble up the CO2? They'd probably grow like mad.

You got some good Idea...

This system work with out sump, skimmer, or re-fuge. All it is a bunch of fast growing bacteria grow in a bottle that consume oxygen, Nitrate,phospate and out put CO2. To reduce the population of the bacteria and clean the media, I back flush the reactor bottle and out come the bacteria. The people that sell the media also sell the calcite gravel to buffer the CO2... I test it and find that the output water PH is not low enough to desolve the Calcite to buffer the water.

I was considering building a spash tank similar to ETS skimmer to Oxigenate the return water.

For now, I just have to ajust the alk and ph. Maybe running a fan accoss the surface of the water to help with air circulation.

The fan isn't going to do much oxygenation itself. It may however cause the heavier CO2 to move off the top of the tank and allow oxygen closer so your surface agitation could grab more Oxygen.

Since you are sumpless, you could have the output flow into a PVC "cup" or holding tank to oxygenate it before releasing it into the tank...

Adding a skimmer would help the oxygenation too, but if it is working without one, no need to add it.

When you say you are adjusting ALK to correct for the CO2 are you basically adding ALK 2 part solution to bump up the PH?

What is the PH of the output of your Hiatt filter? You may be able to scrap the calcite media and go more towards a Calcium Reactor aragonite media if it is low enough. Unfortunately you will still have the PH drop issue though...

I am in the process of comming up with an ETS(becket nozzel) to mix air with water in the holding tank. Trying different config to reduce bubble comming to the display.

I don't use the calcite media as the out put water PH is not low enough to desolve the calcite or Aragonite media.

The solution is ETS like skimmer holding tank.

So far with the Hiatt system... I am able to keep N/P low without skimmer and only 5 gal water change. I have lot of fish... Some die due to fighting and never remove the fish body. The bacteria consume it all.

Coral are growing SPS, LPS.. I don't have any soft coral.

Fish and coral and feed nightly. Planning to increase coral and fish load soon.

Only two small problems(CO2...and Phospate is still too high for my liking)

So far I am satisfied with the result. I only put in 3/4 of the recommened media. With incease bio load in the future, I might have to add more tribase carbon media.

Captain Greg wrote:ALK IS in meq/l...

I think the recommended meq/l for alk is around 4 or 5 from seachem test kit.

I hope that is correct.

Sorry i didn't look close enough thought it was dkh lol