murph
Active Member
This certainly cant be an original idea so I thought I would run it through the forum here to get some opinions.
My aching back permitting I will be putting my lagoon together today. 48x30x18. Now for the experimental part and potential problems.
I am going to place the lagoon directly under a window that faces south. I am hoping this natural light will supplement planned PC lighting. Window is in an alcove so direct sunlight will never be a problem. Benefit will be a natural dawn dusk effect and of course the problem could be run away algae growth.
I live in south Florida so I am going to go down to the pass and collect some live sand. I have put LS like this in small tanks before just to see whats in it and its full of worms, coquina shell fish, pods, sand skaters and god knows what else. The benefit here is a substantial savings and short if any cycle. The potential problem is the "god knows what else" factor. I may even use some wild rock if I can find a suitable piece but this is not likely.
Mangroves. I have never used these in the hobby before but have plenty of access to them. I am not sure how deep a sand bed they will need or even if I want a sand bed this depth but am toying with the idea of planting them down one side of the lagoon. I have a feeling they may do quite well considering the natural light source from the window.
After this some base rock and a few damsels and sit back and see what happens. This is strictly a spare time thing so if it all goes wrong I will just tare it down and move it if necessary and set it back up in a traditional reef tank manner.
Eventually everything in my 75 gal reef system will have to be moved to this lagoon so I can do renovation to the house. This could be the expensive part if thinking the lagoon experiment had gone just fine but after adding coral and fish from my reef tank I find that there are problems with the setup in general.
My aching back permitting I will be putting my lagoon together today. 48x30x18. Now for the experimental part and potential problems.
I am going to place the lagoon directly under a window that faces south. I am hoping this natural light will supplement planned PC lighting. Window is in an alcove so direct sunlight will never be a problem. Benefit will be a natural dawn dusk effect and of course the problem could be run away algae growth.
I live in south Florida so I am going to go down to the pass and collect some live sand. I have put LS like this in small tanks before just to see whats in it and its full of worms, coquina shell fish, pods, sand skaters and god knows what else. The benefit here is a substantial savings and short if any cycle. The potential problem is the "god knows what else" factor. I may even use some wild rock if I can find a suitable piece but this is not likely.
Mangroves. I have never used these in the hobby before but have plenty of access to them. I am not sure how deep a sand bed they will need or even if I want a sand bed this depth but am toying with the idea of planting them down one side of the lagoon. I have a feeling they may do quite well considering the natural light source from the window.
After this some base rock and a few damsels and sit back and see what happens. This is strictly a spare time thing so if it all goes wrong I will just tare it down and move it if necessary and set it back up in a traditional reef tank manner.
Eventually everything in my 75 gal reef system will have to be moved to this lagoon so I can do renovation to the house. This could be the expensive part if thinking the lagoon experiment had gone just fine but after adding coral and fish from my reef tank I find that there are problems with the setup in general.
