UG Filters

[MadReefer]

Paul,
Your tank looks great. when I first started a saltwater tank about 20yrs ago I used a UG reverse flow with crushed coral substrate. It was a 33g tank and I had power heads on both ends. I fought hair algae for months; it looked better than my lawn. I tried everything to control it but no good. After 6 months I pulled it out and the problem went away. Maybe I was to inexperienced back then to determine the real cause but I will never go back to it.

 

[blange3]

Ah the memories! My first book on saltwater was Straughn's. I was thinking about digging it out and giving it a read, now I'll have to make that a priority. (I might even find my Exotic Aquarium Fishes by William T. Innes, not the reprint!)

All my my original bleached coral heads are somewhere in my systems, mostly in the sump. I have parts of diatom filters all over the basement, I need to fix a leaky seal on the XL that I still use from time to time.

Reverse flow was the best UG option, but of course that was hard to do in the early days when we ran them with wood block airstones and Silent Giant vibrator pumps.

Actually UG filters were first put to use in the early fiftees. Robert Straughn
(The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping) advocated their use in salt water but he did not understand the principal which made them work. He used them as a mechanical filter. Saltwater fish could not be kept before the introduction of the UG filter. There were no DSBs or even live rock. There wasen't even dead rock, we used dead coral for decoration and we bleached it every few weeks.
Anyway the reason UG filters fell out of fashion in the late seventees is because in a saltwater tank they will clog in about a year and they were a nightmare to clean.
In the early days we just removed the few pieces of dead coral skeleton and stirred up the water, but when we started to use live rock and have real aquascapes we diden't want to remove everything to un clog the filter so we invented other means to purify the water like Berlin systems, jaubert systems, DSBs etc.
No one used UGs any more.
But if you ues a UG filter a different way it will last forever with almost no maintenance and will reduce nitrates almost like a newer DSB.
A DSB has a few problems in that you can't maintain it and in ten years or so it will become clogged to the point where no water will enter the lower portions. Also the "critters" it depends on to agitate the water will cease to re produce after a few years.
If you run a UG filter in reverse very slowly with a filter like a sponge on the intake, the thing will last forever. Mine has been running continousely for about 35 years. (I did use a DSB before that for a while until it crashed)
After the first 25 years I removed the UG filter plates to see what it looked like under there. It was dirty but not as bad as I would have suspected. I stirred the gravel, diatomed the water and replaced everything. Every few months I stir up the gravel where I could reach and suck out the detritus with a diatom filter which is like a canister filter only better.
I just had my parameters checked by a commercial lab and after almost 40 years in an over stocked tank, my nitrates are about 3. I have over 30 fish in a 100 gallon tank, many are spawning so I overfeed. The tank has never crashed with this system and I don't need to quarantine due to the health of the inhabitants.
I am not pushing this system, I am just trying to educate people who do not know what a proper UG system is for salt water.
Have a great day.
Paul

 

[Paul B]

Blange, I still have those books and many more. I even have my old TFHs from 1969 and Marine Fish magazines from 1972, they were in Black and white.
I have been keeping fish from the fiftees, the early fiftees. :-\

As for feeding techniques, it is posted a few times on RC so I will just try to get the highlights.
Fish in the sea eat mostly fish. They do not eat mysis, flakes, pellets, clams, squid,
Angel formula, blood worms or brine shrimp. They eat fish, whole fish. If you dive you will see thousands of tiny fry near the bottom of the rocks, fish snack on these all day. The problem with all of the foods I mentioned is that they lack Omega oils, fish oil. They also lack calcium. Fish, unlike humans need large quantities of oil, fish have no fat, only oil. The oil is stored in their liver, a shark's liver can be 1/4 of it's weight and that is mostly oil. When a fish eats another fish, it gets almost a quarter of that fishes weight in oil. They eat and need this every day.
Almost all prepared commercial foods are lacking in this oil.
Tiny fish are hard to aquire for our purposes but the next best thing is worms. (not bloodworms which are not worms) Real worms contain this oil and they have it in their entire body. Earthworms have it but live blackworms are cheap and available in most places. I feed a few live blackworms every day with a baster looking thing which I build. Worms are too rich to feed exclusively so I feed some of those other things I mentioned first. If you just feed live blackworms, your fish will want to eat nothing else.
I also hatch and feed brine shrimp every day because I have a lot of small gobies and pipefish which only eat small live food.
The worms should get many fish into breeding condition in a couple of weeks if everything else if good.
I am trying to get with "Ocean Nutrition" to supply tiny frozen whole fish as food. I can get tiny baby makerals less than 1/4" long from Asian markets but they are dried and have a consistancy of wood. The fish eat it but they are not crazy about the texture.
Our fish get their calcium from whole fish also. I add calcium to some dried foods but it is a powder and not easy to do. Sometimes I add fish oil to flakes or pellets to get it into fish.
If your fish are spawning, they are as healthy as they could be and they probably will not even be suseptable to ich and a variety of other malady's.

 

[REEFLECTIONS]

how bout acclimating fw guppies to brackish and breeding them, i think calaxa tried it with full salt acclimation and it didn't work as well as i think they would in brackish. or even mollies would breed prolifically enough in a brackish tank for the fry to provide supplemental food.

 

[MadReefer]

Roy,
I had large sail fin mollies in my 55g and they reproduced like crazy. The other fish loved eating the fry. I got them from your father-in-law who purchased them as salt water mollies and paid a lot at Animal n Things.

 

[blange3]

Blange, I still have those books and many more. I even have my old TFHs from 1969 and Marine Fish magazines from 1972, they were in Black and white.
I have been keeping fish from the fiftees, the early fiftees. :-\

I checked the profile, you've got me by 4 years. ;D

Back in the TFH days folks would argue about Innes vs. Axelrod; much like the legendary DSB wars over on RC.

I like your thoughts on proper nutrition. I asked my LFS if he carries them and he said he doesn't like to bring them in because they carry parasites. I just did a google on blackworms and realized they are tubifex worms. To address the parasite concerns back in the day we use to chop them. Your thoughts?

 

[Paul B]

Reflections, guppies do not count. Even if they are acclimated to saltwater they are still fresh water fish and do not contain the proper oils. Mollies are also not saltwater fish even though they can live in saltwater. They are brackish but you need ocean living fish, fish that always live in the sea. Totally different animal even though they look the same.
I am sorry but you can't cheat. It is our fault if we can not supply the proper foods, not the fish who was happily minding his own business in the sea when someone grabbed him and forced him to live in out tanks :-[
Also, different fish need different foods. Copperband butterflies are considered difficult by many people, these fish were designed to eat worms and not much of anything else even though they will eat clams and a few other things. Moorish Idols eat mostly sponge, I have followed both these fish in the South Pacific and thats what they should be fed. Damsels, like clowns and blue devils can get buy with a lot of prepared foods because they are omnivores and need a little fish and vegetable matter, they can dijest most things. An animal like a seahorse doesen't even have a stomach so it has no method to store food, it must be fed a few times a day and it only recognizes swimming foods although they can be tricked.
Orange spotted filefish only eats some SPS coral polyps, even if you can get it to eat something else, it will probably not live long, it's dijestive tract was designed to eat coral and not much of anything else.
Humans can eat almost anything because of our high body temperature, fats that we eat will liquify in our bodies due to the temperature. Fish are the same temperature as the water so their food needs to contain no fats except oils. They can not dijest (mamal) fat because it stays solid in their bodies. So no beef heart.
I know people will say "my fish look fine and all I feed is pellets" thats true, they will look "fine". If "fine" is what you are going for, then thats "fine" ;D
If you want them in breeding condition, immune to ich and able to live 15 or 20 years, then we have to feed them what they were designed to eat.
My fish generally live until I give them away, have an accident or die of old age which is around 20 for a lot of fish, My fireclown is over 16 and still breeding and I had a cusk eel for 18 years until I killed it in the same accident as my 5 year old moorish Idol. Every ten years or so I seem to have an accident that either kills the corals or the fish. It happens, fish tanks are glass and we like to leave to go on vacations. We can't always leave Jacque Cousteau to watch our tank while we are away.
I eat fish almost every day so I don't feel too bad if I lose one. A fish is an animal that almost never dies of old age, they are almost always eaten alive by something larger. Some think that sharks never die of old age, they just get too large to catch food. :-*

 

[Paul B]

I checked the profile, you've got me by 4 years

THose were my favorite years ;D

Bill. Blackworms are not tubifex worms. Tell your LFS to go check a website. California Black worms are bred in ponds in California and other places, tubifex worms which are thinner come from drainage ditches. Just Google California Blackworms and you will see pictures of the ponds where they are raised. I have been using them since the fiftees.
Blackworms do not carry paracites and even if they did, they would die in saltwater. The worms only live about 10 seconds in saltwater and need to be target fed.
I invented a worm keeper which keeps them alive for weeks. You can keep them in the refrigerator but they degrade like that and my wife goes to the gym almost every day so I won't be putting worms in my fridge ;D

 

[Paul B]

Here is the worm keeper I designed. You need shallow water and a constant flow over the worms. There is an airstone in the left tube which brings water up and over the worms. The right tube sends the water down. There are a few plastic screens formed into a circle to keep the worms from constantly circulating. I feed them flakes which they don't eat but they eat the by products. The secret is to not clean the container. It will grow bacteria which will purify the water which needs to be changes every few days to a week.
To collect the worms, I take out one of the screens and swirl it into a container of fresh water. I only want the fish to eat a couple of worms each. This is a suppliment like a vitamin not a food as they are very rich.

 

[Paul B]

California Black worms (not tubifex)

http://aqualandpetsplus.com/Live Food, Blackworms.htm

 

[Paul B]

I don't know anything about that worm place, I just needed to show worms.

 

[MadReefer]

Tubifex and Black worms are not the same. I use to feed my freshies this many years ago.

I see Paul beat me to it.

 

[blange3]

Bill. Blackworms are not tubifex worms. Tell your LFS to go check a website. California Black worms are bred in ponds in California and other places, tubifex worms which are thinner come from drainage ditches. Just Google California Blackworms and you will see pictures of the ponds where they are raised.

The LFS isn't responsible for the Tubifex confusion, that was the first site I googled. I should know better than to believe everything I read on the Internet! ;D I thouhgt they were different.

The LFS did mention the parasites though and I'm not really worried about that. As you mentioned they would be freshwater critters. After checking out the worm site you posted it's obvious they will be cultured in better conditons than the nasty ones tubifex like.

 

[Paul B]

Bill after using them for over forty years I would have seen a paracite by now ;D

 

[Paul B]

This picture was recently taken by my dive partner in the Caymans, see the white dots to the left of the nurse shark? They are fry and are all over a healthy reef.
Fish snack on these all day.

 

[Paul B]

I am going out in my boat in the Sound in a few minutes. I will be collecting for the first time this year.
I like to renew my population of both copepods and amphipods.
I will also take grass shrimp (which I give to the LFS and some mud which is what I use to renew my bacteria.
I feel that if you never add anything from the sea, you will be left, in a few years with a very limited bacterial load which may not be doing anything beneficial for our tanks. The stuff you get from a LFS does not count much for bacterial diversity, it has not seen the sea for a long time and has gone through collectors tanks, shipping containers, wholesaler's tanks and a stores tank. Nothing is as good as the sea.