wsboyette
New member
Hello, all you scholarly aquarists !
A word of introduction....
I am Wade Boyette, and I am out here in the wilds of N.E. NC. Back in 1990-1992 while residing in a nearby college town, I had a slightly reefy 45 gallon fish-only setup (I say reefy because the were about three pieces of live rock in the thing). I successfully kept a maroon clown, puffer and a mandarin during this tenure - many people here on Reef Central find it difficult to believe that my mandarin thrived on his own (self-propagating !) prolly pod supply in such a small setup ;-)
After moving to my current home, I was forced to break down the setup and store my tanks (also have a 20L and a 90 in storage). Sadly, the 90 has never been set up, as I still am hard pushed to find room for it. Oh well, probably can't afford to do a reef that big anyway.... After putting an addition on my house, I am now finally ready to set up the 45 as a Berlin nano-reef. As I will explain here, it has many of the attributes of a bigger system.
Just prior to moving here back in 1992, I decided I wanted to change my 45 to a reef one day, so I obtained a venturi skimmer (which I got CHEEP so it never worked properly), and a 10 gallon sump tank. I will be shortly purchasing a new skimmer...Then I proceeded to break out with the 'tools from H***, and built an oxygen reactor and an algal scrubber - this last thing I did because I had been reading of the Smithsonian's Dr. Adey's now-questionable success with scrubbers. I've been to the Smithsonian's aquarium a couple of times, and have yet to see any reef tank. The oxygen/ozone reactor uses high pressure air/ozone mix injected into a chamber in which incoming water is violently sprayed over some bioballs. Ozone, of course will prevent it from becoming a bio-filter. So last night, I dragged the 45 and 20L out of the storage building, and proceeded to assemble and test my setup. The 20L will be used as the refugium, and will sit next to the 45 so that it may share the filtration system. I even have made arranagments to put a 10 gallon hospital tank underneath the 20L. Here are some pictures of the work in progress, featuring my homebuilt equipment:
Grand view of the rear:
My homebuilt O2/Ozone reactor, of which I am particularly proud - it is my own design:
View of my crowded sump; note the soon-to-be-removed algal scrubber above it (probably wasn't big enough and has no place in a Berlin reef setup), and my homebuilt float switch at the right end:
Well, there's what I have going on in a nutshell - if I wasn't as slow-moving as a fat mandarin, I would be anxious to show some pictures of the finished reef.
Happy reefing,
Wade Boyette
A word of introduction....
I am Wade Boyette, and I am out here in the wilds of N.E. NC. Back in 1990-1992 while residing in a nearby college town, I had a slightly reefy 45 gallon fish-only setup (I say reefy because the were about three pieces of live rock in the thing). I successfully kept a maroon clown, puffer and a mandarin during this tenure - many people here on Reef Central find it difficult to believe that my mandarin thrived on his own (self-propagating !) prolly pod supply in such a small setup ;-)
After moving to my current home, I was forced to break down the setup and store my tanks (also have a 20L and a 90 in storage). Sadly, the 90 has never been set up, as I still am hard pushed to find room for it. Oh well, probably can't afford to do a reef that big anyway.... After putting an addition on my house, I am now finally ready to set up the 45 as a Berlin nano-reef. As I will explain here, it has many of the attributes of a bigger system.
Just prior to moving here back in 1992, I decided I wanted to change my 45 to a reef one day, so I obtained a venturi skimmer (which I got CHEEP so it never worked properly), and a 10 gallon sump tank. I will be shortly purchasing a new skimmer...Then I proceeded to break out with the 'tools from H***, and built an oxygen reactor and an algal scrubber - this last thing I did because I had been reading of the Smithsonian's Dr. Adey's now-questionable success with scrubbers. I've been to the Smithsonian's aquarium a couple of times, and have yet to see any reef tank. The oxygen/ozone reactor uses high pressure air/ozone mix injected into a chamber in which incoming water is violently sprayed over some bioballs. Ozone, of course will prevent it from becoming a bio-filter. So last night, I dragged the 45 and 20L out of the storage building, and proceeded to assemble and test my setup. The 20L will be used as the refugium, and will sit next to the 45 so that it may share the filtration system. I even have made arranagments to put a 10 gallon hospital tank underneath the 20L. Here are some pictures of the work in progress, featuring my homebuilt equipment:
Grand view of the rear:
My homebuilt O2/Ozone reactor, of which I am particularly proud - it is my own design:
View of my crowded sump; note the soon-to-be-removed algal scrubber above it (probably wasn't big enough and has no place in a Berlin reef setup), and my homebuilt float switch at the right end:
Well, there's what I have going on in a nutshell - if I wasn't as slow-moving as a fat mandarin, I would be anxious to show some pictures of the finished reef.
Happy reefing,
Wade Boyette
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