Equipment optimization

[dmoraski]

I am looking to see if I'm doing things wrong.... I've been in the hobby for years, and I have selectively popped into an out of the forums, but by no means to I know much of what I am doing past the basics.

I have a 90 gallon FOWLR that has been up and running for a decade at least, well except for a couple moves along the way that I had to tear it down. I would like to start including corals into my tank, I think I have the equipment for it and I want to keep my interest going in it. I have a lot of questions that I am hoping this community can help me answer.

What I have-

90 gallon Oceanic pre-drilled tank with internal overflow and return lines (1 set).
3 chamber sump I built based on Melev's Reef page, model F. One chamber is a refugium that has chaeto, sand, rock, and a couple snails in it and a LED grow light that is on 14 hours a day (just bumped up from 12 based on something I read).
AquaC EV-120 with Mag 5
Rio 3100+ return pump (900 gph) with 5' head and 1 90
two Tunze 6055 run off an Apex in main tank
one Seio M1100 (I think) in main tank
two Koralia 2200 (I think) in main tank - I went through a powerhead craze.
Fluval FX6 to main tank (I worked in the filtration industry, went through a filtration phase). Use it to pull out detritus, temped to pull it since it is outside of cabinet
Maxspect R420R 120W fixtures (2). Not happy with the wattage pull for LED and the lack of control with my Apex, but good light quality.
no idea how much live rock.
Pulled my UV sterilizer and a powerhead from my sump (dosed it with copepods to breed them for dragonette) and noticed a 2-3 degree mean temperature drop.

I do not run heat or chiller, tank was hot at upper 70's but I have been pulling equipment and lids to cool down. Stable at about 75 degrees now. I am considering pulling a few powerheads, I am concerned I may have too much water flow in the main tank, if that is possible? I would assume at some point I would have to add back a heater if my wattage load in the tank drops.

Inhabitants:
1 - pencil urchin
1 - pincushion urchin
1 - ruby red dragonet - juvenile
1 - watchman goby - juvenile
1 - clown goby - juvenile
1 - engineer goby - mature, 2 years old
1 - Cinnamon clown mature, 8-10 years old
1 - yellow tang mature, 5 years old
1 - Singapore angel, 4 years old
1 - coral beauty, 4 years old
3 - emerald crabs
more snails and hermits than you can shake a stick at.

So, if you are kind enough to have read this far, will the equipment cut it to start a reef or do I need to make changes? budgets and options are open, within reason. I am married and would like to stay that way....

Wattage-wise in the tank I am at 226 watts of pumps / powerheads. Out of the tank with lights I double that with lights. By my guess, my electric bill is 28-30 dollars a month due to tank. If possible, I would like to reduce that. If not, oh well...

Thanks for making it this far, I'd love to hear your opinions.

 

[ksicard]

I would probably dump the FX6 and clean out the refugium and use the sump to house a protein skimmer. I'm guessing the refugium is fairly small so in reality it may not be doing that great of a job in terms of keeping the tank clean. Personally I would choose a protein skimmer over a refugium any day if I could only have 1 or the other. You can probably sell the fx6 and be able to buy a decent protein skimmer brand new. Other then that I would say your good to go. Lastly, I highly doubt you can reduce your total wattage much more since your already using LED's. Changing out the pumps for more efficient pumps would be costly and only reduce your total wattage by small amounts per pump.

 

[dmoraski]

Hey, thanks for the reply. The sump is a 3 chamber sump, based off of Melev's reef model F.

http://melevsreef.com/category/articles/diy/sumps

The return to tank is in the middle, the left bay is a for a protein skimmer (listed in my equipment list) which is an AquaC EV-120. The refugium is the right bay, which is 10" wide x 15" long x 12 deep. The sump is actually very large for the tank size, probably over 20 gallons.

From what I see, the sicce 4000 moves 990 gph, has 43 watts compared to the 78 that my Rio 3100 plus consumes (for the 900 gph). Is that a decent pump for the money? Drs. Foster and Smith have it for 89.56 right now. That would cut my wattage a lot.

Also, the Maxspects use over 120 watts of LED power, but the input requirements shows almost 500 watts for the power supply (4.5A @ 115V). I will get a kill-a-watt to measure what it really consumes, but I think it is higher than the 90 watts at the outlet an AI, Kessil, or radion boast to consume.