Phloater wrote:
To answer a few questions and make sure I have things clear.

1. He would like to do a reef tank. I am more concerned with the
filtration right now then will upgrade the lighting.


For a reef tank the best filtration is Live Rock, a good protien Skimmer
and a live sand bed, there is some controversy over the live sand bed,
but the rest just about everybody will agree with. The only other
filtration you will need to do is some carbon ever few weeks/once a
month to clear up the yellowing of the water.

2. We are going to be removing the wet/dry & UV filter. I told him just
to get some liverock and toss it in the area the bio balls are in.

You could put the liverock in there, but what might be better if there
is enough rock in the tank, would be to make it a refugium. Make it so
that water stays in this section, put a light on it 24/7 and grow some
algea in there. The algea will remove ammonia, and phosphate and provide
an area for pods to grow without any preditors.

3. So the big 1700 gallon pump should just be pulling water in from the
tank and just back out. I can see if it is pulling from the overflow
that it can add air bubbles in it. I am assuming that we need to have
some sort of cage or somethign on the intake so things do not get sucked
in.


Yes, for the intake, the simplest thing you can do is to just take a
piece of pipe around 12 to 16 inches long, drill a bunch of 1/4 inch
holes in it and cap the end, put this on the intake of your pump atleast
1/2 down into the tank. All of the holes will keep stuff out of the
pump, plus you will not have any more airbubbles.

4. So both overflows should go to the sump? That does make sense too.

Or set it up so that one of the overflows feeds the protien skimmer
directly if possible.


Thank you for all of your help. He was told some really crazy things
apparently. Like I said I have a 45 gallon reef tank, and something
this big was way out of my league.

Not a problem that is why we are here.

Kim Gross
www.jensalt.com


Thanks again!

Dave

kim gross wrote:

Phloater wrote: