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The level you keep you alkalinity at isn't that critical but if you can keep it nailed around 9 you might be the better off for it. This gives you plenty more then natural sea water at around 7-7.5ish dKH but not unreasonable high either. The main problem with running high levels of alkalinity...

4/5 years and counting. Carlo

My suggestion would be to test ammonia & nitrites and wait to see them get elevated numbers. First the ammonia should rise then as it comes down the nitrites should rise. As the nitrites fall the nitrates should rise. Once the ammonia and nitrites are back to zero you are ready for one hardy...

If it's strictly being used in a closed loop fashion (not a sump) you shouldn't need any siphon holes as there is no place for the water to siphon to. You only need to worry about siphon holes when there is an open tank under the main tank that the water can drain to. Carlo

I'd get rid of the metal bolt all together and replace it with a nylon bolt. Ideally, you don't want any type of metals coming in contact with any water that goes into your tank. Carlo

They are OK for a rough gauge but you will probably want something more reliable to do your "official" checking with. You should ideally have a TDS meter you can calibrate. Carlo

Yep and it's pretty good stuff. Much better IMHO then many of the competing brands. It does work. Carlo

30 PPM coming out of the unit is normally considered VERY BAD. Keep in mind that TDS is only a measurement of some things (dissolved solids) and many other things aren't measured that are also getting through the unit probably in equal proportion to the TDS. 30 ppm might be usuable for one...

Honestly most salts are good enough that with a little doctoring here or there your fine. If you can get a good price on a salt then it's probably worth while to use. The only time I'd recommend not going this route is if you have super sensitive corals that have been running on one salt...

I'll throw in my 2 cents. First I wouldn't ever put a trigger in a reef tank unless it was a Bluejaw, Crosshatch, Pinktail or Whitetail. I especially wouldn't ever consider trying a Queen, Clown, Gold Heart, Bluelined, Bursa, Red Tail, Humu/Rectangle, Undulated or Assasi in there. Others like a...

Spray bars IMHO work well if on a closed loop. What I've done in the past is break them up into separate feeder sections (manifold) so each section gets the same amount of flow. This way you don't run into the problem where the holes closest to the pump get the most flow and those farthest from...

Another upside to not having a sand bed at all is parasite infections. The less substrate and rock in the tank the less chance of parasite life cycles being successfull. I wouldn't base my decision on that alone however but thought I'd throw that out there for anyone "on the line" or making a...

Also, there is yet another alternative you can go with that's sort of a compromise. If you like the look of the sand bed but don't actually want one you can get a sheet of acrylic cut at HD/Lowes and glue sand to it. Then place this on the bottom of your tank. It will have the look of the sand...

From all my testing and expertise I've found it best to use a large amount of media that can host the biological denitrifing bacteria in the reactor. The sulfur beads themselves aren't porous enough to do this. Matrix works but I've found something that works even better but since I sell it I...

I myself don't use diamond drill bits but regular bits. On thicker tanks such as 40g breeders I just let the drill press do the work and 15-20 minutes later a good hole is done. I get about 100 holes from a bit where you might get 3-5 from a diamond bit (or so). It takes a bit longer but I just...

Yep missed a keyword there which really changed what I said. "No problem" is what I meant. Thanks for clearing that up. Good eye! Carlo PS now if we could only program the spell checker to know what we meant instead of what we typed... :)

If you can control your lunar lights fine if not just leave them on all the time. Not much juice used by them. The day cycle seems fine but you might find you don't need 12 and 8 hours and could get by easily with 10 and 6 hours. Crunch the number to see what the electric bill cost with your...

A guess but I think you might have too much light on those little guys. That's not a very deep tank so it won't require as much light as you think it will. A few T5s might have been a better choice or even PCs. You could try a couple layers of screen or similar on one portion of the tank and...

If your nutrients levels test high or you have obvious algae growing then go for 24/7 until you get the levels down. Then go for the opposite light schedule. This will "focus" more photosynthesis in the refugium during the time the main lights are off keeping the pH levels a bit higher...

Thin tanks are just very hard to drill since the least amount of flex causes them to crack. Probably the biggest advise is just to go very, very slow and try and keep the glass from flexing as much as possible. Carlo