Challenge: Creating a natural reef eco-system

[Jimbo]

I think you kinda missed my statement, Not using live clams, but dead clam shells, snail shells, coral rubble because its already small and more easily decomposable, ...

I was thinking that if you had a very large tank containing both live clams, clam shells, snails, and coral rubble, you could have a sustainable calcium source. My thinking is that the existing clam shells, snail shells and live rubble will slowly be breaking down and replacing the calcium being used up by any corals, and the live clams (as they die) would provide you with a new source of calcium as the original shells get used up.

A natural source of CO2 could be phytoplankton if you can extract it from them as they die.

Also, to deal with salt creep you could use top up water in a mister/sprayer to keep the salt in the tank and ensure the salinity never changes.

[Feivel]

Also, to deal with salt creep you could use top up water in a mister/sprayer to keep the salt in the tank and ensure the salinity never changes.

For this reason in a closed tank, i beleive it to be impossible to maintain proper salinity levels witout some sort of water change or adjustment, unless as previously stated pipelined directly to the ocean, wich in turn could potentially pump tons of baddies (and as many goodies( Into the closed tank system. Some sort or prefiltering system could be required to catch these bugs/bacteria.

Waikiki aquarium in hawai uses pipelined water from the ocean to feed their massive tank. That HUGE clam is awesome too, I would be pissed to go to the aquarium and have it closed due to coral spawning clouding the tank making it impossible to see thru the sperm and egg larvae.

I woke up ONE morning to an unusually clouded tank, i assume it is my one clam that spewed to the water. Too bad i only have one clam I hear this happens twice a year. I would love to get another clam and have this phenomena happen again. The larvae starts as microscopic and matures to full grown, like many other things, most die or get eaten before maturity.

[Feivel]

The reason you don't need a skimmer is that as the caalerpa grows, just like plants, it uses up the organic wastes that the fish are producing

Something i read somewhere

[Jimbo]

For this reason in a closed tank, i beleive it to be impossible to maintain proper salinity levels witout some sort of water change or adjustment, unless as previously stated pipelined directly to the ocean...

Perhaps you could use a salinty monitor to spray a measured amount of top up water into the tank to handle salt creep and try to restore salinty levels. However, I do see the issues with trying to retain correct salinity levels.

On a similar note, I was just reading about the carbon cycle, and was wondering if we were to spray our water into our tanks through pipes above the aquarium, instead of directly topping up the tank with top up and return water, would this have any impact on the tanks alkalinity levels? The reason for spraying water through air is to increase the volume of water exposed to the CO2 found naturally in air. This in turn should increase the amount of CO2 that could be absorbed by the water, although if it would be a measurable amount is another question.

This idea occured to me, as CO2 absorbed in rain water increases the alkalinity in rain water, and in extreme circumstance produces acid rain. If you kept circulating your water through a sprayer for a period of time, in theory you would absorb enough CO2 to raise your alkalinity - and it would look cool having a rain storm in your tank?


Now the questions become:
1) how long would you need to circulate the water through the air to get any measurable change in alkainity?
   E.g. If we circulate 1 gallon of water through air for 1 hour, we get a measurable alkalinity change of x.

2) how much water would be required to increase the alkalinity levels in our tanks to any useful level?
   E.g. If 1 gallon of water for 1 hour increase our alkalinity by x, we need to circulate y gallons of water to increase our alkalinity to 8 dkh.

Has anyone ever heard of any experiments similar to this, or is anyone willing to give this a try and report on the results? If it works you would become a household name in the marine aquarium world and move the hobby forwards a huge step. I'll even let you name the process after yourself.