- Location
- westchester ny
Hi guys!!! After a long hiatus from sw and mr I've decided to take the plunge and give it another go. It seems like the technology in the hobby has advanced so much since my last reef tank (65 gal sps/mixed super low tech) that I can get the system fairly automated which I'm hoping will keep things nice and stable and allow me to spend more time enjoying the tank and less time stressing out over it. So anyway... I'd welcome any and all feedback on the planned equipment list. I'll keep this going and add lots of pics along the way. Plan is to make the system as quiet as possible, so some of the equipment was chosen based on that need (internal jebao pumps vs mp's, dc pumps where possible) So here's what I have so far:
Tank: marineland 4x2x2 corner flo120 gallon w/ Monterey canopy and stand in black.
Lighting: reefbreeders photon w 48 led, and aquatic life 2x 54w t5 with kz purp and ati blue +. This will give me just around 3w per gallon, and I can always tweak it from there if I need more. I've had great success with sps at 3w per gallon of straight t5 so with the more efficient leds, I think it'll be plenty of light.
Filtration: eshopps gen 3 30" r-200 refugium (if I use the fuge compartment it'll be deep mud/sand bed with sea grass/mangrove shoots. If not I'll use it as s reactor chamber for carbon and gfo, maybe chemi pure blue). 60-75lbs of live rock.
Skimmer: reef octopus classic 150 sss. Looked at some efficacy studies and it looks like the classic is just as good if not better than a lot of newer models. Also entertaining the idea of a skimz dc monster, but prolly gonna stick with ro.
Reactors: gonna stick with the simple bottom fed tumbler for carbon/resin/gfo. For the finer media I'll just put it in a mesh bag in the reactor.
Flow: the return pump will either be a jebao dct-6000 or a reef octopus 3500 dc pump. Calculating for head loss, my target flow rate thru the sump is 600-700 gph. Some people may think this isn't enough but I prefer to have the water go thru the filter at a slightly lower rate because i think the prolonged contact is better than the additional turnover you get from a higher flow rate. Cool thing with a dc pump is I can always adjust it as needed. For the dt, I've opted for 2 jebao rw-15's which will run anti synced. Again this will be adjusted as needed, but to start I think it's plenty since I'm not using a lot of live rock. All of this should give me right around 8500 gph or roughly 70x's volume per hour.
Dosing: Kamoer three channel dosing pump with eshopps 2 well reservoir and separate container if needed. I'm either going to dose b-ionic 2 part and magnesium. Or use salifert all in one calcium acetate with additional alk and mag. Idk I'll figure it out based on the needs of the system but I'll be set up to dose three liquids automatically.
Auto top off/rodi/water changes- the fuge has built in float valve in return chamber so I'm going to mount an eshopps 5 gal reservoir with 1 tsp of Kalk per container (again to be adjusted as needs dictate). Barracuda 100 gal per day rodi unit. Tropic Marin pro salt.
Fish: pair of true percs, flame or coral beauty angel, pair of helfriech Fire fish, some kind of basslet, flasher or leopard wrasse, and maybe some threadfin or bangai cardinals. This is not going to be a "fish" tank so I want to keep the stocking light.
Corals: acros, Millies, montis, stylos, pocillopora. Maybe some Lps down low. All of the corals will be red, white, teal, blue, purple. I want the dt to have a crisp almost frozen look so no green or orange corals planned.
That's more or less the plan. Purchasing equipment now and hope to have it up and running with water and rock by end of August. At some point I'll set up an apex or reef link depending on compatibility of final components. I can't bring my self to go hard bottom but I am keeping it shallow with coarser reef grade that shouldn't blow around too much and can be vacced out.
Unboxing pics to come. Would love to hear feed back!
Here's the tank (not keeping the pirate ship lol)
Tank: marineland 4x2x2 corner flo120 gallon w/ Monterey canopy and stand in black.
Lighting: reefbreeders photon w 48 led, and aquatic life 2x 54w t5 with kz purp and ati blue +. This will give me just around 3w per gallon, and I can always tweak it from there if I need more. I've had great success with sps at 3w per gallon of straight t5 so with the more efficient leds, I think it'll be plenty of light.
Filtration: eshopps gen 3 30" r-200 refugium (if I use the fuge compartment it'll be deep mud/sand bed with sea grass/mangrove shoots. If not I'll use it as s reactor chamber for carbon and gfo, maybe chemi pure blue). 60-75lbs of live rock.
Skimmer: reef octopus classic 150 sss. Looked at some efficacy studies and it looks like the classic is just as good if not better than a lot of newer models. Also entertaining the idea of a skimz dc monster, but prolly gonna stick with ro.
Reactors: gonna stick with the simple bottom fed tumbler for carbon/resin/gfo. For the finer media I'll just put it in a mesh bag in the reactor.
Flow: the return pump will either be a jebao dct-6000 or a reef octopus 3500 dc pump. Calculating for head loss, my target flow rate thru the sump is 600-700 gph. Some people may think this isn't enough but I prefer to have the water go thru the filter at a slightly lower rate because i think the prolonged contact is better than the additional turnover you get from a higher flow rate. Cool thing with a dc pump is I can always adjust it as needed. For the dt, I've opted for 2 jebao rw-15's which will run anti synced. Again this will be adjusted as needed, but to start I think it's plenty since I'm not using a lot of live rock. All of this should give me right around 8500 gph or roughly 70x's volume per hour.
Dosing: Kamoer three channel dosing pump with eshopps 2 well reservoir and separate container if needed. I'm either going to dose b-ionic 2 part and magnesium. Or use salifert all in one calcium acetate with additional alk and mag. Idk I'll figure it out based on the needs of the system but I'll be set up to dose three liquids automatically.
Auto top off/rodi/water changes- the fuge has built in float valve in return chamber so I'm going to mount an eshopps 5 gal reservoir with 1 tsp of Kalk per container (again to be adjusted as needs dictate). Barracuda 100 gal per day rodi unit. Tropic Marin pro salt.
Fish: pair of true percs, flame or coral beauty angel, pair of helfriech Fire fish, some kind of basslet, flasher or leopard wrasse, and maybe some threadfin or bangai cardinals. This is not going to be a "fish" tank so I want to keep the stocking light.
Corals: acros, Millies, montis, stylos, pocillopora. Maybe some Lps down low. All of the corals will be red, white, teal, blue, purple. I want the dt to have a crisp almost frozen look so no green or orange corals planned.
That's more or less the plan. Purchasing equipment now and hope to have it up and running with water and rock by end of August. At some point I'll set up an apex or reef link depending on compatibility of final components. I can't bring my self to go hard bottom but I am keeping it shallow with coarser reef grade that shouldn't blow around too much and can be vacced out.
Unboxing pics to come. Would love to hear feed back!
Here's the tank (not keeping the pirate ship lol)
