Critique My Setup Plan!
Critique My Setup Plan!
I had a 90G for about 3 years, but had to give it up when we moved. I missed it, so my wife surprised me with a BC29 for Xmas. Turns out she was also paying a lot more attention to the first tank than I thought and picked up most of what I needed to get it started.
I spent yesterday getting it wired, filled it with water and got the Aragonite down. I'm now in the process of getting the filtration down before I go and get LR.
After wading through the 40+ pages of this thread (which has been hugely helpful), my plan is:
Since I'm not going to use the bio-balls, run the water level significantly higher than the marked 'max line'.
Chamber 1 - knock out the false bottom, block the lower inflow with acrylic. Put in the BC skimmer that came with the tank (looking at it compared to the Euro-Reef I had in my old tank and reading what everybody else says it seems awfully light weight and I'm not keen on swapping the airstone every month, but I figure if I've got it already, it can't hurt). If there's room with the skimmer, I'll also drop the 150W Eb-Jagr heater I've still got from my old tank in here as well.
Chamber 2 - Pull out the false bottom here. Pick up a couple of low heat submersible lights and use this chamber for LR rubble and chaeto. Given the corner we've got the tank in, scraping the paint and rear mounting a light isn't really an option. I grew macro in the sump of my last tank and it had a huge impact in terms of reducing algae growth in the display.
Chamber 3 - Stick with stock pump for now. If there isn't room for the heater in chamber 1, then this is where it'll go.
Stocking Plan
I'm only planning on stocking a pair of clowns, a neon goby and a fairy basslet. My wife would really like a yellow tailed Damsel on top of that, but given the damsels aggressive tendencies, I'm trying to talk her out of it. Otherwise, she's the one who'll have to spend three days catching it when it goes psycho.
Lighting
This is mostly going to be a FOWLR tank will with maybe a couple mushrooms or softies for color so I'm just going stock for lighting, though I will swap the actinic and 10k bulbs so the fans come on with the actinic. I'll set my timers to turn on the actinic a 1/2 hr or so before the daylight, and shut off 1/2 hr later.
Water Motion
For water motion I've still got a new-in-box MJ900 and MJ600. I'll use one of those on the other side with a random flow head to create more movement.
What do you think? Any other suggestions?