Consensus on Lava Rock?

[vince-1961]

Thank you Reefer Dude. Concise, informative, exactly the info I needed.
No matter where the sand comes from, whether beach, near shore or offshore, it'd still be more "alive" than anything that's been bagged and sitting on a store shelf, would it not? ( ... except maybe for the sand on the high and dry part of the beach that never gets covered by saltwater and is baked by the sun every day .... ???)

 

[kjr_trig]

I voted "neither", when we bought our first house several years ago a saltwater tank came with it, it was a FO with 2 fish an Achilles Tang and a Huma Trigger that had been in there for roughly 2 years the owner said, there was a bunch of lava rock in there that over the course of 2 years I took out as I found stuff I liked better. The lava rock seemed to have no effect on the water parameters....I wouldn't do it though based on what I read from Reefkprz.

 

[vince-1961]

 

[vince-1961]

well fooey! The strange film on surface disappeared with the lava rock and stayed gone...until today. IT'S BACK! The only change is I added a gallon of Seachem De*nitrate to the dry section of my wet/dry sump, but I rinsed it well first.
WHAT IS THIS AND WHAT CAUSES IT?
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[reefkprz]

hydrophobic/hydrophyllic compounds e.g. fats, oils, protiens, etc, sticking to the surface tension of the water, the only real way to get rid of them is more turbulence at the surface of the water to resuspend them in the water column untill your filtration can pick them up or surface skimming.
Which I will say has nothing to do with lava rock, except the possibility that when you removed the lava rock you removed a lot of the trapped organic waste that would provide a source of these untill they built up again through feeding and other accumulation in the tank wich could be why it went away for a period after removing the rock.
I'm still glad you removed the lava rock, now onto the next hurdle

 

[vince-1961]

Isn't the protiin skimmer supposed to get that stuff? I let it run constantly and it produces some dark skimmate.
Last time I used a ShopVac and just vacuumed the surface as a means of removing this crud.
Where is it coming from and how do I prevent it from existing?
EDIT: more importantly, is leaving it be on the surface just ugly and harmless or is it harmful?

 

[reefkprz]

the skimmer will remove that stuff but only if it can get it, whats happening there is its getting trapped by the waters surface tension before reaching your skimmer. I'm willing to bet if you shut your skimmer off for 24 hours you would see a signifigant increase in the "thickness" of the sludge on top of your water.
the challenge your presented with is to keep that stuff in the water column long enough to get grabbed by your skimmer OR use a surface skimmer to pull water from the top and deposit it into the skimmer section of the sump (or directly into the skimmer intake)
also you should take a look at what your feeding for foods as one or more foods that your feeding may be a direct source of excess oils and protiens. very common with cheaper foods. what are you feeding?
its ugly but not extremly dangerous, but it does reduce oxygen exchange rate which in the long run can have a deletorious effect on your tank. AKA there are worse things, but its not good.

 

[vince-1961]

I feed a variety of foods. Main one is "New Life Spectrum Marine Formula" (little brown pellets). Then much less frequently, but still regularly, I feed "TetraMarine Saltwater Flakes" and also frozen mysis shrimp. Then, every so often on a totally irregular schedule, I'll toss in a a few live brown or white shrimp (the same shrimp humans eat or use as bait for fishing) or live fiddler crabs. My fish eat these voraciously! (I understand that natural live food is always better than man-made substitutes and that the shell of the crustaceans helps the digestive tracks of the fish.)

 

[reefkprz]

natural live and frozen home made are definatly the best choices in foods.
IMO Tetra flakes are garbage but I cant say they are the sole cause.
being an aggressive carnivore tank you uprobably have a very limited selection for a Detritivores and scavengers in your tank.
I would hazard a guess that its lack of detritivores and scavangers leaving lots of un-utilized waste in tank to break down. fish only utelize about 30% of the nutrition in foods before they pass it.
so you need to modify either your clean up crew, or your filtration to accomodate this. by the sounds of it adding a surface skimmer atttachment would be your best bet, I notice in the pictures most of your powerheads and return lines are pointed down, having one pointed upwards may help a bit but may not solve the problem completely

 

[valeram]

I got a couple of Lava Rock that came from my FWA. I was thinking of putting it back to my SWA but changed my mind after reading this thread. Thanks.

 

[vince-1961]

"aggressive carnivore tank"?
Fish = one 4 inch damsel, one 7 inch pearly razorback, one 5 inch Niger trigger, one 2 inch "Dori", and one other 6 inch long fish that I don't really know what it is. It's mostly blue with red scars on its face and a yellow tail. I'm not at home at the moment, but I found these pics of it from other threads on this site. The damsel and niger trigger are also shown in this pic.
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Also have some small red mithrax crabs, a very large sand-cleaning hermit, a gorilla crab that I can't catch and a starfish.
Couldn't install a clean up crew yet, b/c nitrates have been at 40. Finally got them down to 20, so I ordered 150 nassarius snails and 100 cerith snails, but they have not been delivered yet. Need to get some blue legged crabs to eat the green algae that is starting to take over, but I'm taking things nice and slow. Have yet to finalize the plumbing as I'm still waiting on parts to arrive.
I've had the tank up and running for a little under two months now.
EDIT: I can surface skim very easily by removing a 90 degree elbow. It's just noisier.

 

[reefkprz]

well triggers and razorbacks are aggressive carnivors if they are chowing live shrimp and crabs I can only assume you dont have much of a clean up crew.
what do you have for snails, crabs, brittle stars etc as your tank janitors?

 

[vince-1961]

see above.

 

[reefkprz]

sorry I totally overlooked that portion for some reason.
I think adding your clean up crew will assist alot with reducing the speed of build up by helping remove waste and removing the elbow temporarily or even for an hour or two a day at a time when the noise wont be bothersome will help as well by flushing it off the top.
hope this helped out some.

 

[vince-1961]

a bag of black snails arrived today. Taking them home now to begin a 3 hour acclimation......

 

[vince-1961]

Came home yesterday to find the Pearly Razorback on the floor, deader than a doornail. The idiot jumped out of the tank.