Quote:
Originally Posted by theSmurfette
Yes. My lfs recommended that we start with treated tap since it was such a large volume and then go with rodi for changes following that.
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That was terrible advice if you do not know what is in your tap water already. Hopefully it does not cause you issues. It will take you an extremely long time to remove all impurities that may be there via water changes, and could lead to guesswork down the road on what is causing you issues you may run into.
You only need to add prime once, when you first add tapwater. Adding it again after that won't really accomplish anything for you, and can actually hurt the cycling process. It detoxifies ammonia, but while you are cycling you WANT ammonia to be there. The reason you add it at the beginning is to get rid of chlorine if you are using untreated tap water. If there is nothing live in there now, let any ammonia that is going to occur occur!
Hang-on back overflows are made by a variety of companies, and come with many reviews. Some people swear by them. Other people don't like them. My issue with them comes from their unreliability... I'd rather no sump, then risk using a HOB overflow, but that is my personal opinion and I know dozens of other reefers use them with no issues. Just be sure to test and simulate multiple power outages and ensure when power comes back on and your pump kicks back in that the overflow works. Otherwise your sump will run dry, and your tank will spill the excess all over the floor (5-10 gallons in a sump your size, depending on setup).
Nothing wrong with using a tote as a sump, either. Some people use them as full-time sumps, or those large horse-feeding troughs.
As for that light, at a glance I can't tell how good it is. There are a lot of no-name lights that will suffice, but I'd advise not investing a lot in coral and getting like one test-coral to see how well it'll do...