Thoughts on Downgrading...

seth16

seth16

New member
Ever since i saw that Brian was downgrading to conserve power, and also help a little if a hurricane hit and he lost power, i have been conscidereing doing it myself. At the moment, i have a 75 gallon, and a 5.5 gallon, the 5.5 is no problem, but it is the 75 that i am worried about. I have about 30 powercords runnig that thing, and it gets very messy and expensive. As much as i like keeping tangs and larger fish, i think that more economically friendly and smarter approach would be to sell off my tank, and buy something like the Red Sea MAX tank, which is a 34 gallon COMPLETE setup, with 3 stage filtration, protein skimmer, t5 lighting, overflows, buit in pumps, adjustable flow and flow direction, ANS it has this really cool supply trat that really intrigued me...lol...this sells for about $800, and i can probably get at least $1500 for all that i have in my tank now, so i would even end up with some extra. What are your guys thoughts on downgrading like this. OH the max also has fully programmable light timers and pump timers, and all the pwoer supply is connected to one convenient power cord...lol
 
800 is alot for a 34 gallon setup. and since it a all in one if someting fails it might be hard to find replacement parts. i think you would be better to go to a 24 galllon aquapod and use a small sump and skimmer and a small closed loop with a halide. there a ways of cutting cost on elec by doing away with muti pumps and heaters. call me at 321-266-8564 and will talk about setting you up a nice setup with what you got and see how much elec we can cut.
 
Downgrading, feh! I'm saving to upgrade my 12g Aquapod to this bad boy :)

I'm a little disappointed in its lighting but having my nano up and running for more than a year I know its perfectly adequate to have a nice looking mature reef after setup and grow out time happen... After a year my mini reef really looks like a reef

Other than that I've read there are a few kinks to work out such as the built in skimming and how to keep microbubbles out of the main display but for the most part people like them.

I like the idea of having a full 29g display (the rest of the gallonage i think goes in the back for filtration) instead of a "29" where some of it is in the display

this means an extra fish or two and lots more room for decent aquascaping to me and the one powercord thing was really smart.

I hate messy looks and a nice clean look like that is great. I know some petlands have them on display and I think reefworks in lake mary so we've gone and like.. played with the system just to see what it'd be like to have in our house but im getting mine from SITC since they can order it and its the closest to me

If you get a chance do a search on the nano reef forums there's some really great reviews\pics of the red sea max over there
 
I just got mine about 2 months ago and love it much better than any nano or aquapod...

If anybody is intrested in one i can get them for About $600 brand new with tax and all...
 
you may want to use the power use calc to get an idea but Im not sure going from a 75 to a 34 will save much. running a 75 really shouldnt pull that much power, return, skimmer and lights. you can use a low drawing powerhead to get your added circulation and be all good. My reason for droping the big tank is more due to not being home for weeks at a time if we get a storm, thus not being able to run a generator. You could easily get a battery system that could be recharged by an invertor pluged into a car to run a powerhead or two to keep your tanks going in the event of a storm. Those red seas are nice but like was mentioned above Id be worried about parts in an emergency as well as the fact that you are stuck with one method of doing things. With a tank/sump you have a lot of easy options to tune your system to how you want it.
 
I heard that customer service is excellent and getting part is pretty easy even tho i havent needed any yet.
 
lol I will have a 40g and a 30g (normal tanks tho not all inclusive) for sale soon.

The 30g has a 250w MH, with a nice oceanic custom sump and overflow box, stand and canopy are only "fair" condition.

The 40g has a drilled overflow drain pipe, a wet/dry converted into a normal sump, 36" T5's, Stand is in awesome shape, canopy is so/so.
 
I'm with firefighter. My 110 SPS dominant is only using like 40-50 bucks a month & I have VHO's, T5's and Twin Metal halides along with 5500 gph of flow, mag 9.5 return and a sedra 5000 on my euroreef skimmer.
 
Well, im not worrying too much about the power usage as i am all of the power cords and the size. It is taking up too much room and a compact unit like that would be much better and easy to maintain, yes, it is a little more complicated as far as solving problems with skimmers and such, but i mena, it is like a laptop, it is harder to fix problems compared to a desktop, but it can still be done...... I dont have too much money, so i cant really spent eh money on more powerful pumps that can replace what i have, and for other things that c ould help, but i think i have to focus on buying a generator JUST for my tank, a small generator for when the power goes out.

Seth
 
Eh just upgraded to a 125 from brian...lol...cutting back from 3 tanks to 1 for ease of care...:) 5 filters is a pain in the ***, all hang ons too! :(

oh brian, fixed that fitting in a few minutes today...not bad at all...gonna reconnect it tomorrow after work to make sure it cured good....:) my bro was whining about the gurgle noise from the skimmer. any way to knoclk that back an quiet a bit more?
 
never heard a gurgle from an asm skimmer, make sure the air tube is clean. If the gurgle is from the overflow pipes try adjusting how far down the air line is pushed into the top of them. I had it running silently with the same pump and plumbing setup, but I did have a refugium on it so the pump wasnt pumping quite as much flow to the main tank as it is if your not running a refugium. If you need to throttle the pump down a bit to get it to balance you can run that tee back into the sump just to slow the flow going into the tank a little. Dont panic though, Ive never been able to figure out why but Ive seen tanks take a week or so to have the overflows balance out and become quiet. Im not sure if tis just the pvc getting a coat of salt creep on it or what but new setups always make a little more noise in the first few days, anyone else notice this?

Seth sorry for the hijack, I didnt do it:) If room is your problem then downgrading is the only real way to fix that, a small generator for your tanks shouldnt be to much and would be a good investment to.
 
yeah the gurgle is from that silicone air intake tube on the skimmer...I guess I can mess with it a bit, but it is from sucking the air in to make the bubbles...no worries here, always a way to figure something out....how the hay did you have a refugium set up in there? so crammed! where did you put the top off bucket and the fuge? any pics of the old setup?
 
seth i dont know if you could get as much for your system as you think. everyone that sells there stuff for even 1000 on here has a hard time to do it, unless its over 210gal
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

rrrrob
Thoughts on Purigen?
Replies
11
Views
473
alejandrodia
A
T
TM Trigger Systems Platinum V2 Controller
Replies
0
Views
294
tmann51
T
B
UV sterilizer.
Replies
2
Views
583
Batman222b
B
T
I'm confused...
Replies
12
Views
373
wvned
wvned
S
Why do oversized protein skimmers not adequately remove protein from a tank?
Replies
17
Views
3K
Guygettnby
Guygettnby
Back
Top