I questioned the UV myself also, but the guy that is helping set-up the tank (he owns a LFS and also does maintenence and set-up and is very well respected in my area) said it would be a good thing to have, so I bought it. Keep in mind, I did not buy anything from him, I got all this stuff myself, so he has no motive for me to buy something if he felt it is not needed. He knew going into this venture that I was going to buy all of my own supplies. I am going to buy livestock from him though. I was not planning on running it 24/7. I was thinking of running it like 1 week per month.
What are your suggestions? Get rid of it altogether?
Do you think it is even needed on my system?
If your purpose is to eliminate nematophores and be able to keep a broad range of animals I would agree but I might consider another model.
Define nematophores please. The search function here at the site is down, and some quick searches at a few other sites did not yield much. I gather they are aptaisia, or something similar?
I looked up nematophores in The Reef Aquarium Vol 1 (Delbeek/Sprung) and there is nothing in the index.
If you think the double helix is not sufficient, I have room for 1 or even 2 more that I can add to the sump without any problems.
I am not really wanting to do an inline UV.
OK, now the Turbelles. You say the streams of the 6000 only carry 4 ft. Would it be a bad idea to to have one on each end of my 6ft tank pointing toward each other? Would that cause too much current in the middle of the tank. Keep in mind, there is already 2 Iwaki 70rtl's that will be pumping water from the sump into the tank. Each pump will go to an inlet that splits into 2 different directions. So with both pumps, there will be water shooting 4 different directions from the Iwakis alone. I am wondering if adding the 2 Turbelles (one one each end facing toward the center of the tank) will be too much flow?
Each Iwaki 70 rlt is rated at 1500 gph. There is only a 5ft head on this set-up, so that may drop to like 1300 or so, but with two, I am still looking at 2600 gph or more I would think. That is a lot of flow for a 180 gallon tank I believe. Do you think my fishes would be running for cover if I also added Turbelles? Do you think my soft corals and my ritteri would have a chance against that kind of flow?
Also, I was wrong about the gallons of the sump. It is actually 140 gallons and 8 ft long. First stage is for protein skimmer and UV (and anything else I can think to stick in there.....maybe a second skimmer???). That stage is 2 ft long. The mud/calupera stage is 3ft long, the bio-chamber is 2ft long and the final stage is an area for removeable media like carbon, etc. The final stage is 1 ft long. This thing is a modified holding tank that the owner of the LFS offerred to me for free as a sump. I did some modifcations to it and I think it is going to be one hell of a sump. It is very well designed I believe.
I do think it is the best choice for a ritteri which should have a more gentle current moving around the animal rather than blasting it.
By this statement do you mean I should drop down to smaller Iwakis and get the Turbelles?
I am not sure that would be possible at this point.
With the Stream, while it would be unlikely it is possible for anemone to be harmed.
Whe you say "possible for an anemone to be harmed" do you mean that the pumps will blast it to death, or do you mean that the anemone could get sucked into it somehow causing damage?
Thank you so much for your advice, I really do appreciate it.