sayn3ver
10/02/2007, 08:37 PM
Hi all. This is an exciting time for me. After procrastinating and saving some $$$ and waiting for items, I am finally starting my build. I have no pictures right now, but felt the need to get this thing started anyway. I've been keeping a 20g high, 3wpg pressurized co2 tank for about a year so this will be my first reef. I also am setting up a 90g sea grass tank as we speak as well. I just have to poly the stand for that and get a filter and that's ready to rumble.
Equipment:
AGA 40g Breeder
Picked up used, practically brand new for 15 bucks. I picked it up in 2006, it has a 2005 build/inspection sticker. The guy wasn't lying when he said barely used. It was used for freshwater as well, so no stains or creep to clean.
Ati Powermodule 4x39w (ordered today yay!)
After waiting since april/may reekgeek called Saturday and i told them I'd have to get back to them today. I opted with Grimreefer's help to go for 1 ati aqublue, 1 ge 6500k, 1 UV 10k aquasun, 1 ati blueplus. You may have noticed my thread in the ligthing/equip section on deciding between 175w and 250w halide, which was the original plan in order to save $$$. But I was persuaded to go with T5, and was about to pull the trigger on the aquatinics fixture when I got the call from reefgeek. Yea, the Ati unit is more money and yea I am kinda on a budget, but I figured I might as well do this right and the powermodule is just plain nasty (after seeing all the sweet tanks on overseas forums I was sold). So that's that. Oh and it will be hung from electrical conduit bent and fastened to the rear of the stand(basically two upside down J's / L's ).
RO/DI Unit(ordered today)
Twopartsolutions econo-75gpd RO kit w/inline TDS meter + BuckeyeFieldSupply dual DI canisters with inline TDS meter. I'd like to call this a poor man's spectrapure maxcap. My reasoning is the maxcap comes with 2x dual TDS inline meters, and I like the convenience so I definitely wanted those. I also wanted 2 DI canisters so I could use one of those Maxcap units in front of a plain refillable mixed bed. The reason I went with the twopartsolution unit was it was cheap at $114+ TDS meter $25 was it came with extras like sink attachments, auto shutoff valve, etc etc. The buckeyesfieldsupply unit was well, one of the cheapest and the meter ends up only costing $16 when bundled with them compared to $25. My total cost with shipping was $238.xx so its about 100 dollars cheaper than the spectrapure (who I called to verify that the maxcap DI would fit a standard housing). The only thing I don't have is a pressure gauge but my dad tested the pressure when installing a 2 stage unit for our fridge and we have an easy 70psi so I didn't really need it.
That's it so far. The stand I will be building out of 2x4's and mdf and will take pictures when I get time to build it.
My plan
My next purchase will be a skimmer, and as right now I strongly feel its going to be a DAS EX-1. I was going to pull the trigger tonight on it but I figured I'd wait and ask what people think.
My original sump situation was going to be 3 10g tanks underneath the stand, where the 2 outside tanks will be elevated and drain into the center tank. One for the fuge, 1 for filter socks +skimmer and one for the return pump. Don't ask why but mostly for the ease of not having to cut and silicone glass for baffles, its cheaper per gallon than larger tanks. Its flexible for future needs. I'd feed both of my drain lines into the one 10g area, one into a sock, the other into the skimmer. The return pump will have a T+ball valve above it and feed the refuge. The outside tanks will drain to the center via 2 bulkhead drains each. Although, if i go with the DAS EX-1, I might not need the 3rd tank and could save room by having one drain dump into the fuge. I may go with way so I can have room for a possible calcium or kalk reactor. Or maybe I should plumb the skimmer outside of the stand altogether?
I know this was long. But I am just so damn excited. I also have 20lb's of liverock in a 20g Brute in the basement w/ heater and MJ900. It's tap water though and after reading today am afraid it may be ruined, as I am unsure of the presence of copper in my tap water. I did use prime of course for chlorine.
AHHHHH.
Equipment:
AGA 40g Breeder
Picked up used, practically brand new for 15 bucks. I picked it up in 2006, it has a 2005 build/inspection sticker. The guy wasn't lying when he said barely used. It was used for freshwater as well, so no stains or creep to clean.
Ati Powermodule 4x39w (ordered today yay!)
After waiting since april/may reekgeek called Saturday and i told them I'd have to get back to them today. I opted with Grimreefer's help to go for 1 ati aqublue, 1 ge 6500k, 1 UV 10k aquasun, 1 ati blueplus. You may have noticed my thread in the ligthing/equip section on deciding between 175w and 250w halide, which was the original plan in order to save $$$. But I was persuaded to go with T5, and was about to pull the trigger on the aquatinics fixture when I got the call from reefgeek. Yea, the Ati unit is more money and yea I am kinda on a budget, but I figured I might as well do this right and the powermodule is just plain nasty (after seeing all the sweet tanks on overseas forums I was sold). So that's that. Oh and it will be hung from electrical conduit bent and fastened to the rear of the stand(basically two upside down J's / L's ).
RO/DI Unit(ordered today)
Twopartsolutions econo-75gpd RO kit w/inline TDS meter + BuckeyeFieldSupply dual DI canisters with inline TDS meter. I'd like to call this a poor man's spectrapure maxcap. My reasoning is the maxcap comes with 2x dual TDS inline meters, and I like the convenience so I definitely wanted those. I also wanted 2 DI canisters so I could use one of those Maxcap units in front of a plain refillable mixed bed. The reason I went with the twopartsolution unit was it was cheap at $114+ TDS meter $25 was it came with extras like sink attachments, auto shutoff valve, etc etc. The buckeyesfieldsupply unit was well, one of the cheapest and the meter ends up only costing $16 when bundled with them compared to $25. My total cost with shipping was $238.xx so its about 100 dollars cheaper than the spectrapure (who I called to verify that the maxcap DI would fit a standard housing). The only thing I don't have is a pressure gauge but my dad tested the pressure when installing a 2 stage unit for our fridge and we have an easy 70psi so I didn't really need it.
That's it so far. The stand I will be building out of 2x4's and mdf and will take pictures when I get time to build it.
My plan
My next purchase will be a skimmer, and as right now I strongly feel its going to be a DAS EX-1. I was going to pull the trigger tonight on it but I figured I'd wait and ask what people think.
My original sump situation was going to be 3 10g tanks underneath the stand, where the 2 outside tanks will be elevated and drain into the center tank. One for the fuge, 1 for filter socks +skimmer and one for the return pump. Don't ask why but mostly for the ease of not having to cut and silicone glass for baffles, its cheaper per gallon than larger tanks. Its flexible for future needs. I'd feed both of my drain lines into the one 10g area, one into a sock, the other into the skimmer. The return pump will have a T+ball valve above it and feed the refuge. The outside tanks will drain to the center via 2 bulkhead drains each. Although, if i go with the DAS EX-1, I might not need the 3rd tank and could save room by having one drain dump into the fuge. I may go with way so I can have room for a possible calcium or kalk reactor. Or maybe I should plumb the skimmer outside of the stand altogether?
I know this was long. But I am just so damn excited. I also have 20lb's of liverock in a 20g Brute in the basement w/ heater and MJ900. It's tap water though and after reading today am afraid it may be ruined, as I am unsure of the presence of copper in my tap water. I did use prime of course for chlorine.
AHHHHH.