Hi All,
My Name is John and I live in Indiana,
I have kept fresh water aquariums for 20 years and want to give the marine aquariums a go.
I have been lurking on here for a while trying to start learing what I need to get my basic setup up and running and have tried to search through the forums to find answers to most of my questions without needing to post repeat questions you all have answered over and over.
Please excuse this long winded post but I want to cover my bases about what I want to do in this first post.
The tank I have chosen to go with is the AGA 125g and it will be built as an in-wall tank in our family/theater room. The room behind the wall is a laundry room so all waterline connections are easily accessible and I have an electrician comming over next week to run two 20a circuits to dedicate to the sytem.
I purchased a PFO 2x250w MH ballast and 2 ushio 10k bulbs along with a PFO VHO retro light kit that will support 2 uri super actinics. this will be the main display lighting. For cooling, i also bought 2 icecap fans that have the temp probes so I can have them mounted into the light fixture to blow across the lights.
My plan for livestock is already in place:
2 clowns
1 yellow tang
1 Coral Beauty
1 sixline wrasse
after full year of established tank, last addition will be 1 mandarin.
6 total fish
Corals will be soft and LPS only, no clams or SPS.
Frogspawn
Brains
Shrooms
Zoas
trumpet
hammer
finger leather
toadstool
palys
GSP
I know the MH lighting is not neccessary but I got the ballast from a friend for exchange of a co2 reactor from one of my planted tanks so MH it is...lol
Now for the newbie Q/A part:
From what I understand, the tanks flow can be lower on a softie tank than on an sps setup so I have chosen to go with 4 MJ900's with the prop mods. Does this sound like a good decision?
I plan to mount 1 in each corner.
I also whant to go against the grain per say and set up my tank differently than most i'v seen.
I am considering going with a non-drilled tank and making a skimmer box thats the width of the tank and putting it at one end, I will use a pump placed inside the box to feed water to a 55g tank that will be mounted higher than the display tank. the 55 will be a refugium with a shallow sand bed about 2" to 3" deep and have LR and Macro. the 55 will be drilled and the overflow will gravity feed back into the display at the opposite end from the skimmer side. The pump runing this will be a magnum 350 power canister with the filter media removed. Instead of floss and filter sleeve, I plan to use the canister to run activated carbon which will be changed monthly at water changes.
My reasoning for the 24/7 carbon is because I want to try to go skimmerless and let the tank have the higher neutrient levels for the corals, This is why only 6 fish bioload in 175g of water.
Questions here:
Is 55g a good size for a refugium on a 125 or does it need to be bigger?
How many pounds of LR do you think the system should have to pull off this idea?
The fuge lighting will be 4x55w PC running reverse cycle from main display.
I am also considering the use of a home built algea turf scrubber to add more bio filtration but still researching this part. So far the idea is to use a MJ1200 hooked up to a wave timer to feed a spray bar over a screen, water would be pulled from display the same way as refugium is, and dump into the refugium so no algea would accidently get sent into the display.
I'll end this post here and thank you all in advance for any recommendations you can give or opinions you share about my plans.
Hope I'm not too crazy and sorry if the post sounds scattered, some of these ideas are just formulating.......
John
:rollface:
My Name is John and I live in Indiana,
I have kept fresh water aquariums for 20 years and want to give the marine aquariums a go.
I have been lurking on here for a while trying to start learing what I need to get my basic setup up and running and have tried to search through the forums to find answers to most of my questions without needing to post repeat questions you all have answered over and over.
Please excuse this long winded post but I want to cover my bases about what I want to do in this first post.
The tank I have chosen to go with is the AGA 125g and it will be built as an in-wall tank in our family/theater room. The room behind the wall is a laundry room so all waterline connections are easily accessible and I have an electrician comming over next week to run two 20a circuits to dedicate to the sytem.
I purchased a PFO 2x250w MH ballast and 2 ushio 10k bulbs along with a PFO VHO retro light kit that will support 2 uri super actinics. this will be the main display lighting. For cooling, i also bought 2 icecap fans that have the temp probes so I can have them mounted into the light fixture to blow across the lights.
My plan for livestock is already in place:
2 clowns
1 yellow tang
1 Coral Beauty
1 sixline wrasse
after full year of established tank, last addition will be 1 mandarin.
6 total fish
Corals will be soft and LPS only, no clams or SPS.
Frogspawn
Brains
Shrooms
Zoas
trumpet
hammer
finger leather
toadstool
palys
GSP
I know the MH lighting is not neccessary but I got the ballast from a friend for exchange of a co2 reactor from one of my planted tanks so MH it is...lol
Now for the newbie Q/A part:
From what I understand, the tanks flow can be lower on a softie tank than on an sps setup so I have chosen to go with 4 MJ900's with the prop mods. Does this sound like a good decision?
I plan to mount 1 in each corner.
I also whant to go against the grain per say and set up my tank differently than most i'v seen.
I am considering going with a non-drilled tank and making a skimmer box thats the width of the tank and putting it at one end, I will use a pump placed inside the box to feed water to a 55g tank that will be mounted higher than the display tank. the 55 will be a refugium with a shallow sand bed about 2" to 3" deep and have LR and Macro. the 55 will be drilled and the overflow will gravity feed back into the display at the opposite end from the skimmer side. The pump runing this will be a magnum 350 power canister with the filter media removed. Instead of floss and filter sleeve, I plan to use the canister to run activated carbon which will be changed monthly at water changes.
My reasoning for the 24/7 carbon is because I want to try to go skimmerless and let the tank have the higher neutrient levels for the corals, This is why only 6 fish bioload in 175g of water.
Questions here:
Is 55g a good size for a refugium on a 125 or does it need to be bigger?
How many pounds of LR do you think the system should have to pull off this idea?
The fuge lighting will be 4x55w PC running reverse cycle from main display.
I am also considering the use of a home built algea turf scrubber to add more bio filtration but still researching this part. So far the idea is to use a MJ1200 hooked up to a wave timer to feed a spray bar over a screen, water would be pulled from display the same way as refugium is, and dump into the refugium so no algea would accidently get sent into the display.
I'll end this post here and thank you all in advance for any recommendations you can give or opinions you share about my plans.
Hope I'm not too crazy and sorry if the post sounds scattered, some of these ideas are just formulating.......
John
:rollface: