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Yes, the correct sequence is very important. If you supply water to a skimmer via the main return pump, you are letting the refugiun act as a mechanical filter, and it will tend to become a dirt trap. Yes, you are correct, it's amost impossible to gravity feed a skimmer. The whole idea behing...

Many manufacturers place a tag on the inside of the bottom frame, so that you can see it if the tank is empty or bare bottom. Usually you see the common tank sizes like a 55 using tempered glass. If the glass looks thin compared to what you'd expect, it is often tempered.

If you are using an overflow box with U tubes, I highly recommend keeping a couple of spares around. you may never need them, but if you do, you want one right away. In a real emergency you can build a U tube out of PVC pipe and a few fittings. It's true, you can't see the water in the tube...

I have to agree with this. Unless you have some very expensive fitting to recover, you are better off just cutting out the bad section and redoing it. Most PVC fitting are not that expensive, and pipe is cheep. Also, it can be a little tricky to get a good cement job on a used PVC fitting...

Unless this is a tank where you are away for long periods of time, and I mean days, save your money and don't get an auto feeder. Most reef fish need a much better diet that the dry food you can use with those.

Usually feeding problems with triggers are restricted to keeping up with their appetite. Give the fish some time to get used to his new home. Most fish get a lot less timid in time.

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...