Pet Forum / Aquaria / Marine Reef / August 2004

I have a chiller circuit for my 150 gallon reef which pumps cooled
water back into the tank at about 600 gallons an hour.  The tank was
designed poorly in that with the hood on, I cannot access 2/3rds of
the tank. Further without someone else to help me take the hood off I
cannot access that portion of the tank.    The 1/3rd of the tank that
I can access has a MH pendant over it, and I have that portion of the
tank pretty well saturated with corals, with no room for additional
organisms.    Bottom line is that I would like to add some more corals
to the difficult access sides of the tank which do not require alot of
light, and perhaps are filter feeders ( sun coral, Coco worm perhaps,
non-photosynthetic gorgonians) Such organisms are considered to need
regular feeding (and perhaps even directed feeding) to survive for
long in captivity.  The chiller return enters the tank on the least
accessible portion of the tank.  I was thinking of placing filter
feeding type organisms around the chiller return, and adding foods via
the chiller circuit.  In order to optimally place organisms, it would
be great if I could observe how the water flows out of the chiller
return into the tank (comes into the tank from a 1/2" pvc pipe at
about 8" off the bottom of the tank).  Anyone know of a safe dye that
can be used for such a purpose.  I of course would not want to do this
unless I knew it would not be toxic to my reef tank.