HELP Setting up a 180 FO Tank

[bone]

WOW WOW WOW it's been a long long time since I was last on Reefcentral and it's great to be back.

Finally getting back into the hobby but doing a Fish Only tank instead of a reef. I really like the footprint of the 180gal and also going to do a full tank fake coral set-up

Now for all the questions.

Do I keep the dual drains or tee them into into one?

Sump would a 36" pre-made sump work? something like (Precision Marine)

What pump?

What Skimmer?

I would think since the tank is FO a good refuge would be a huge plus

 

[DoubleM 10]

me personally would skip the fuge and go with a larger skimmer. but thats my opinion.

i dont think that having a fuge on a FO set up would make as much of an affect as on a reef system.

 

[namxas]

Keep the dual drains for redundancy as well as max flow.

The 36" pre-fab sump is fine.

I'm liking cone skimmers these days...the Eshopps work really well IME.

Pump-wise, I'm using a Pan World on our new setup (210 gal) for the main returns and a Reeflo Dart for the CL.

If you plan on keeping larger fish, the fuge isn't really necessary, but for medium to small fish, it's a nice feature if you can swing it.

Another thing that works really well for us is the use of live macro algae in the DT...it really helps with water quality and adds a nice look/motion to the tank.

 

[bone]

Matt & greg thanks for the information. I was thinking of skipping the refuge and installing a bigger skimmer in that section but thougt I would ask first. Never thought about the macro algae that would be very nice