The Aquarisystem
tank has a sump in the back that consists of three chambers
- over flow chamber, filter chamber and return chamber. The
heater, the skimmer and the grounding probe all live in the
overflow chamber. The skimmer is a modified Aquarisystem skimmer,
its a powerhead venturi skimmer, with an airstone added in
the downdraft chamber. Works fine. The filter chamber has
been converted to a refugium, and is doing well.
Return
and Circulation
In the
return chamber there is a Hagen 802. It is on its own MVT
wavemaker, on for 45 seconds off for 45 seconds. In the top
left corner of the tank is a medium Powersweep (which I made
stop sweeping. In the bottom left is a small maxijet. In the
back bottom right, behind the wall of rock, is another Hagen
802. This gets circulation to all the areas behind the rock,
so there are hardly any dead spots. The three circulation
pumps are controlled by a Wavemaster Pro, which I like a lot.
Power
Outage Foilers
I have
the return pump and the circulation pumps controlled by different
wavemakers and on different circuits, because I once had a
Wavemaster go out on me and lost some fish. Never again. The
main return and the grounding probe are plugged into a UPS
in case of black outs, and the UPS has worked wonderfully
during the California power problems. Also plugged into the
UPS is a Penn Plax battery air pump that senses power outages.
It goes on when the UPS runs out, which has not happened yet.
Lighting
Currently
the system has two 150 watt IceCap mini pendants, running
Hamilton 10000K bulbs. These rule! There is also one 96 watt
PC Actinic O3 from lampsnow.com along the front of the tank.
This rules also. And, there is one 30 watt Magtinic bulb along
the back, which doesn't really rule, but is nice.
Top Off
I have
an air pump driven top off system. It consists of a 5 gallon
plastic container. I drilled two hole in the cap and sealed
two pieces of small rigid tubing through the holes. One piece
of the tubing is connected to airline tubing descends to an
inch above the bottom of the container, while the part not
in the container runs to the sump- this is how the water gets
to the tank. The other does not go below the water line in
the container, and is connected to an air pump. There are
check valves on both lines. The pump is hooked up to a Grainger
float switch in the sump. I mix up some Kalk once a week and
evaporation doses it. I like this system.
Rock and
Sand
There
is at least 80 lb. of live rock in the tank, and 50 to 60
pounds of agronite sand. 20 lb. of that sand was recently
added, bring the bed depth to about 3 inches. I will see how
that goes with he Nitrate levels.
Inhabitants
Fish
1
Purple Tang
3 Neon Gobies
1 Blue Line Pipefish
1 Yellow Watchman goby
2 Common Garden Eel
1 Bangaii Cardinal
1 Cleaner Wrasse
It
may seem like a lot for the tank, but many of the fish
are very small.
Not
Fish
Assorted
Acro'sXenia
Elongata
Candycane Coral
Brown Daisy Polyps
Green Daisy Polyps
Bi Colored Frogspawn
Blue Sponge
Yellow Porites
Xmas Tree Rock w/ Porites
Yellow Polyps
Clove Polyps, 2 Species
Colt Coral
Keyna Tree Coral
Open Brain
Yellow Scroll Coral
Green Acropora
Tubestrea
Red, Green, Purple and Blue, and Mushrooms
Ricordia
Button Polyps
Toadstool
Green Sea Fan
Mithrax Crab
Halamedia
Chili Coral
3 Hawaiian Feather Dusters
2 Cucumbers
Sand
Bed Critters
I feed
a lot, and have never had a problem with anything eating anything
else.
