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Placing live rock in a sump, especially when it's out of the water is counterproductive. If effect, you are using it the same way as bio balls would be used in a typical wet/dry trickle filter. What is occuring is that the bio-media, be it live rock or bio balls rappidly converts ammonia to...

My question to you is, why do you feel you need any supplemental lighting? You already have MH and PC which can be configured in many combinations. You should be able to get what you want out of that without adding T5s. Unless you have some very specific lighting application or problem, save...

It looks like a very nice system. I do like the front to back dimension. However, if you do the math, the tank holds about 90 gal, so it's not really what I'd consider a nano size tank.

There is no really right or wrong way when it come to sandbeds ot bare bottom tanks. You'll find people use all sorts and have good results. Base your choice upon what you want to keep in the tank. If you want fish that dig, like jawfish, then you need something for them to dig in. If you have...

Yea, using a screen is what you'll need to do. It will have to be cleaned often, as the fine screen easily gets algae growing on it. If you are worried about trapping a fish on the screen, you could build it out of a stiff nylon material and build it so that it's a couple inches away from the...

ETSS skimmers are excellent. They have a patent on the downdraft design, and that's why you don't see other manufacturers making similar skimmers. Removing micro bubbles is done by the design of the sump. Note the placement of the baffles in the sump in the pictures of the skimmer in action...

The control of red algae or any other algae all depends upon control of nutrients, mostly nitrate and phosphate. Unless you control these, you are going to have algae problems. Just because your test kits reads zero or a very low value, don not think that there is no problem. Nitrate and...

You may need a chiller, then again you may not. A lot depends on the air flow through room. I owuld be prepared to get a chiller if the tank temp stays about 82 or so.

Well, I see we disagree on some of the minor points. I find MHs to be a lot more stable than any fluorescent tube, and find I can get 12-18 months out of the MHs, but only about 12 months out of a tube. This is for typical MH bulbs 6500K to about 15000K. I have never used 20000K MH bulbs, but I...

I use a pair of Tunze 6000 stream pumps on their Mullicontroller, but my tank is a 125 gal reef. Also the Tunze stuff is out of sight expensive. I think the current price on that setup is now about $900. That being said, there is nothing that will give you such a random water flow throughout the...

What you have right now isn't bad for the size tank you have. You could add or change to the Koralia's, but I think the improvement would be modest. I'm not a big fan of Seio, mostly because of size and quality issues.

A very wise choice considering that you'd end up replacing almost all the stuff insider the fixture.

I think any quality skimmer you get will be just fine. When reading skimmer reccomendations people will often recommend the one they bought along with a comment like "... and it works great", or they will recommend their dream skimmer. Most people only have experience with a few different...

Quite a few good posts here. When making a selection also consider the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Be sure to count the power consumed and the buld replacement costs. For example, if you use 6 T5 bulbs, and you replace them once a year and they are $30 each, you'll be spending about as...

When I use mine, I keep adding drops until the color goes completely blue. I do this by adding drops until I don't see a color change. When I don't see a color change I know I've added one drop too much, and take this into account with the reading. The change should be rather dramatic when you...

The other question is, what kind of lighting do you have now? In other words will the T5s you want be a massive improvement? My choice would also be for MHs. However, I would consider the supplemental T5s to be optional. With all the various color temp bulbs available today, the additional T5s...

Are you sure your measurements are correct? Assuming they are you still need to "wiggle" 11 inches of sump through the opening. In any case, it's likely to be a struggle. I had a similar problem, and ended up moving the tank about 18 inches from the wall, and putting the sump behind the tank...

This would depend upon what your criteria is for performance. Certainly a 400 watt bulb would produce more light compared to a similar 250 watt bulb. However, if cost effective is your criteria then the additional light produced for the additional 150 watts of power consumed would give the...

Assuming that the check valve is wanted to prevent back siphoning in the return line, pgordemer gave some excellent advice ... I have tried several different types of check valves, including the ones shown in the last few posts. It has been my universal experience that in only a few weeks they...

I can not help but think that mixing salt brands hoping to come up with a mix that is balanced can not really be done. Yes you might bring the parameters that you can test into some sort of balance, but you have no idea about the areas that you can not test. Also, with salt formulation, there...