Equipment question

[AndyL]

3rd frag tank upgrade in the last year - time to do one major refit and hopefully be done with it for a year to come... (3x50g system)

Pondering equipment upgrades and where I should be spending $, and where one can 'cut corners' safely.

Need a bunch more powerheads - tunze vs Seio 1500s. Tunze are double the cost, but do save a bit on electricity (11w vs 28w). Pay for themselves in the long run - but it's the VERY long run...

Obviously the skimmer I'm not skimping on - but I'll probably go DIY recirc - Don't need pretty just functional.

I've been doing well with DIY 2 part for Ca/Mg so far, is it really worthwhile to look at reactors? Then again, I keep adding SPS frags; in time I'm guessing the cost would be justified...

What about the other tidbits? Ozone, controllers, auto top offs, etc etc etc. Anything you guys wouldn't live without?

[Ken668]

For the water flow/power head situation, I would honestly look into the MaxiJet mods. They are dirt cheap and you can get 1600-2000 gph out of one. And they have low power consumption too. If interested, check out www.MJMods.com

[RobinsonFam1]

definately a reactor. if you can diy a skimmer then a reactor will be a cake walk.
i was going through 2 gallons of 2 part a month then finally my reactor was completed and im saving a ton of money.

with 3 tanks i really done think you need too many powerheads.
i would maybe use 1-2 per tank. whatever you can get cheap to minimaze the investment.
i would opt for a larger return pump that is efficient and use multiple outlets for you circulation. if you have a "ton" of powerheads each at about 20 watts youre surely over 100 watts which could have easily been put into a bit bigger return pump and spending the same or less on bills.
look into airlifts if youre really concerned with utility bills. also you can gravity feed the tanks into eachother to minimize water pumps even more.

i would not live without auto top off with kalk reactor. i used a float valve on the sump and a diy reactor that cost me about $25 to make. priceless!

ozone....a luxury...not mandatory by any means.

cheap lighting over shallow tanks...works great! again...minimal investment with big rewards. i have a mix of lighting due to whatever i could scrounge up for free or close to it. i have PC, MH, and shop lights.
PC and shop lights are right over the water and the corals are 6-8" under the lights. i get great growth. my acros grow 1/4" or more per week. softies explode under dim shop lights with decent feeding.
MH will be over a 115 gal tank that was given to me. i have 400 watters and 70 watters. 400 was high bay lights (free) the 70 i traded an old pump for. the 400 bulbs were 3 mos old hamilton 14K that i traded a couple frags for. again...free....

i am setting up a new prop system that will be about 300 gallons total and plan on running a lil giant 3 and 4 until i come across a better deal. i will do most water movement at the top then gravity fed from there.

hope this gives you some ideas!

BR

[AndyL]

Just got back from picking up the new stand - had it built a little oversized for future upgrades - the "new" (to me anyway, who could say no to 15$ 44x18x15's out of 3/8" with no braces?) tanks are sitting waiting for me to get that stand painted wired, sheeted and ready to go...

Really pondering the powerhead options - yes the maximods are nice... Have a few PenguinStreams running at the moment, but honestly I'm getting tired of picking up all kinds of new stuff only to hack it up :lol:. Giving serious thought (and been looking through the used forum) to the tunze 6060/6080/6100s. Who knows at the rate the upgrade is going the new nano's might be out (and they're not as much of a jump compared to the seios). Short of going to a red dragon - which is way beyond the budget - I think I'll stick to powerheads for flow. I also like the redundancy, thus if a pump fails, it doesn't remove all/most of the flow.

Lighting on one tank will definitely be a 2x175 system I've got on the current tank, the other tank I'm tossing around NO/ODNO/VHO/T5 at the moment. 3rd tank, though I wanted it for use as a frag tank, looks like it's delegated to sump for now (Was going to tie into the sump on the system that would be beside but plumbing isn't going to work right)

Got a kalk reactor to add to the topoff system... Looking for a cheap canister for a place to run carbon/rowaphos and temporarily cuprisorb (tanks are from a store, I'm sure they had some copper used in em) but may DIY a media reactor...