I currently have a 58 reefready with 380 watts of 50/50 daylight/actinic VHO's and it is circulated by a RIO2100 ph. I also have a smaller Refuge 'tank' (rubbermaid) of about 15 gal that had almost half of about 75 to 100 lb of live rock. The Refuge is fed by a RIO800ph that has to push 2-3 inches of head, and then recirculates by gravity-fed syphon into the tank. the 2 tanks level with each other at the very top of the main tank in a power out.
For livestock, I have a couple
red mushrooms that are on their third comeback, a couple watermellon mushroom rocks, several typed of
button polyps, a leather coroal (recently propogated), a large and increasing number of carpet coral rocks, a medium carpet anemonie, a cup coral, and a pair of clowns-not mated. There is also a fair amount of red leafy algae of unknown variety in the main tank, and a bunch of red ogo in the refuge.
There is no sump, no skimmer, and no nitrates. I feed, oh, maybe 2 times a month. I have had great success with using natural filtration and denitrification, though I have had a couple other disasters over the years, each of which was purely my fault.
The tank as I forsee it next.
Tank will remain mostly as is.
Sump will be added to recieve outflow water, instead of the RIO, which is currently hardpiped inline with the outflow and return.
A real pump will be added to take the water back up, and up to the 7'+ level.
The Refuge will be expanded and lighted, and put on a shelf above the aquarium.
The Refuge will overflow into a surge device. And emergency overflow will return water to the aquarium if the Surge stops functioning.
The Surge device will surge about 2 to 3 gallon per minute into the tank. An Emergency overflow will be installed in cas the Surge stops working.
The tank will recieve all Emergency overflow water.
The sump will be sized to allow any and all overflow water, including the entire contents of the surge device, in case of power out.
I am working on a diagram of just how I see all this working, to get further hints on what I'm going to do wrong.
Thanks for looking. Jeff
