To Biofilter or not? help me out here...

[brewmaster15]

Hi Lance,
Sounds like a great test Lance...Just be sure to monitor and record all your parameters daily.

Based on what I saw with one tank...I don't see why what you are thinking would not work.. I think the only time you may run into a difficulty is when there are fry in the tanks... You will probably want to set it up so that any particular tank can be isolated from the system and have full water changes done 2X a day when fry are present ....either that or maintain a few biofilter hydro sponges in the sump to be used on the fry tank if needed.
what plants were you thinking of for the veggie Filter? I was just talking with Cary the other Day.. you may want to talk with him as he has incorporated plants into his setup at home.

Good luck,
al

hth,
al

[Lance_Krueger]

Hi Al,
Yah, I've got it designed into the system so any tank can be shut off from the system, like when I put formalin or meth blue in after the eggs are laid, or when the fry are on the parents backs and I want to start hardening up the water. Plus, I don't want the babies sucked up into the overflow of a central system if they're scattered before attachment.
Would a few hydrosponges in the sump make enough nitrates to matter? I wouldn't think so, would you? The plants in the sump would eat them up anyway, right?
Regarding plants, I was considering fast growing stem plants (like water sprite, or hornwort, or milfoil, or anachris, or something along those lines), but because my sump is going below the bottom rack of the breeder setup, the sump will be 8 feet long, by 3 feet wide, by only 12 inches deep. So because it's so shallow, I was thinking about some large floating plants, like water lettuce, or water hyacinth. I was thinking about putting a blind from the water line to the underside of the bottom shelf of the rack, splitting the sump visually into two 4 foot by 3 foot sections. That way, I could light each half of the plants on alternating photo periods. In other words, I would have the plant lights over one half of the sump on for the daytime period (12 hours), and then they would shut off with a timer in the evening, and then the light over the other half of the sump would turn on for the nighttime hours. The concern I had is that if you light the whole sump for 12 hours during the day, and lights out at night, there might be a pH fluctuation, since the plants would be producing CO2 at night, causing the lightly buffered, acidic water to crash the pH. Maybe I'm being too cautious, but it was something the plant guys on some of the plant forums thought would be a good thing to do to keep the pH consistent.
I also did some researching in the saltwater forums, since they are big into refugiums, and I wanted to see how I could apply that to freshwater. The saltwater guys do this alternating light thing with their saltwater tanks. They light the display tank that contains their live rock during the day for viewing, and then when the lights are out over the display tank during the night, the light comes on over the refugium, which consumes the CO2 produced by the live rock of the display tank at night, plus the refugium is producing oxygen at night. They say this keeps their pH from diving during the night, which they used to have a problem with until they started reverse lighting the refugium at night. Keeps the water parameters (i.e. pH) very stable.
With my central discus breeder setup, I don't have any liverock or plants in the main breeder tanks since they are barebottom, so I'm trying to duplicate the same situation in the sump, by lighting half the sump on alternating light cycles. Any thoughts? Am I overanalyzing and complicating this? I am just wanting to have as good of water quality as possible. I'm just concerned that I might not have enough nutrients produced by the breeder pairs, to keep that many plants alive. But I guess they'll just die back until only enough plants are alive to consume the given nutrients. I just don't want to have to dose nutrients or anything like that, as I want the plant part to be as low tech as possible. I don't know, since I've never done this. It's a big experiment for me, and I haven't been able to find any info out there on a central discus breeder system using plants, so I'm just trying to pick and choose info from the various forums (discus, pond, saltwater, plant, etc.).
If it fails, I can always just take the plants out, or even add a bio tower if I need to. It's all easily added to a central system, and I have it designed into the system if I want to do that. Actually, I was planning to do the bio tower thing anyway, before I saw this no-biofilter experiment here you came up with. Got me to thinking, so here you go. Thanks for the idea. Very helpful!
I'll give Cary a call and see what he has to say, though I don't know him too well.
Lance Krueger

[froody]

ok sorry didn't read full thread lol

[tdr1919]

Brew,
There is a very sucessful breeder here on LI that does not do massive WC's
he explains that he pulls about 1" of water from each of his tanks daily (this also constitutes as cleaning) and replaces it with aged, PH balanced water.
each tank (large & small) have a sponge filter and either a canister or a hang-on filter. His fish are large and healthy, he been doing this for years.
- Tom

[johnm]

how does he get rid of the nitrates?

[kaceyo]

Tom,
I'd be interested in hearing details about this persons setup. Any chance of getting tyhem to post here about it?

Kacey

[dandestroy]

So any update on this ammonia/pH or live plant sump etc...

[Don Trinko]

I'm cycling a 75g tank now with fish. I have 6 skunk cats in it. I have watched the amonia carefully and it never went above 1.0. It has now gone to 0 and the nitrites are starting to rise. I think it is because I have very few fish in a large tank.
I think those who do massive wc daily may have a biologic filter but it is doing very little. If you leave very little amonia in the tank the amonia eating bacteria colony would be smaller. I'm new to the Modern Discus keeping so please corect me if I'm wrong. Don T.