Substrate

For my sand I am going to use Tropic Eden Tonga ReefFlakes. It is hands down, easily the best sand on the market and the best sand that I have ever tried. This hobby is all about opinions, and that is mine...lol It has a brilliant white color, and is the perfect grain size. Big enough not to blow all over the place with flow, but small enough not to trap junk and detritus. Its perfect. Did I mention how much I like this sand yet? I can't remember.

Plumbing

I am planning on doing all of my plumbing in some kind of color scheme. My first thought was to do everything in grey, but now I am leaning towards doing all the PVC piping in navy blue, and my ball valves/unions in orange. I want everything to look clean with aestheically pleasing lines and flow.

Here is a picture of what I started with, but I may go to all white PVC schedule 40 and just paint it navy with Krylon Fusion. The handles on my union ball valves are already orange, they are the Cepex True Union valves, as pictured below in the second picture.

LED Lighting

I have tried just about all methods of lighting over the years. My last setup had 250w metal halides, and I got great coloration and growth from them. The downside for me was the heat that they put out. It would raise the water temp by many degrees, and I was relegated to keeping the A/C low to keep the ambient room temp down, and also blowing lots of fans to cool the water causing lots of evaporation. After all, I had three 250w halides inside a short canopy. But, with the above mentioned methods, I was able to keep my water temp stable, never varying from between 79.5 and 80.5*.

This time around I have decided to go with LED lighting. I think over the last couple of years, the technology has improved, and the cost has come down. There are also people on Reef Central with tanks that have been running LEDs for awhile, and have shown good growth and coloration. Benefits for me will be much less heat, energy savings, and not having to replace bulbs.

I chose the AquaIllumination Sol LED pendants. I am going to run 3 of them over my 4 foot tank. They are supposed to be equivelant to 250w MH. It has a controller that runs the units, and you can select intensity (PAR) and color. You can manually adjust the blue vs the white lights, and get the exact color that you want. In fact, many people that run these units are not running at 100% intensity due to them bleaching out corals if set too intense, so that shows the power that LEDs have.There are many other features that it can do, but those are the main points. They will be mounted in my canopy from short hanging cables.


Here are a few pictures:

Biopellet Reactor

I have decided on my new tank to use a biopellet reactor rather than maintain a refugium, or run carbon and GFO. In my expierence with running one on my old 150g tank, it works very well. The bacteria colonies formed by the pellets kept my nitrates and phosphates very low. In fact, I had to add Oyster eggs, amino acids, and other micro foods for my SPS due to the water being so clean. You may have heard of vodka dosing. It is the same concept, adding a carbon source for bacteria growth. But with biopellets, there is no daily work like vodka dosing or worry about overdosing. You just set the reactor and leave it. Bacteria forms in about 4 weeks.

One reason that I want to run biopellets is to help my SPS thrive. The SPS in my old 150g tank grew very well and had great coloration, as long as I fed them properly. Also, having no refugium allows me to keep a cleaner sump, and easily vaccuum out the detritus and junk.

I am using the same reactor that I ran on my last tank, a Next Reef SMR1. I am going to use NP Biopellets. Last time, I used Warner Marine's EcoBak pellets, but I am going to try a different brand this time. I am going to power the reactor with a Mag 3 pump, but if it seems to produce too much flow, I may just change to a MaxiJet 1200 since I have a few laying around. I would save 15 watts as well. It is recommended to put the end of the return line from the reactor near the skimmer intake.

Flow / Powerheads

For flow in my tank, I am going to be using EcoTech Vortec MP-40s. I used these on my last tank and absolutely loved them. They provide great random flow and can sync with each other, or do the exact opposite of the other one while synced up. They produce massive amounts of flow, which is great for SPS. One of the neat things about the Vortecs is that the motor is on the outside of the glass, so they add no heat to your tank. They have an external controller that allow you to select the flow pattern, as well as the intensity of the flow. I always ran mine in Reef Crest mode, which I am sure that I will do again.

Here is some info from the website:

The award-winning technology of the MP40w ES provides wireless operation on tanks between 50 and 500+ gallons, producing 1,000 to 3,200 gallons per hour of flow and smallest in-tank footprint for full-size reef aquariums.


Operational Modes
Constant Speed Mode - Pump runs continuously at a constant speed which can be set by the user.

EcoSmart Nutrient Transport Mode (NTM) - A two phase program to promote maximum health and nutrient export, as well as increased growth for corals. Alternates between a resonant standing wave and a surge effect to stir up and export nutrients.

EcoSmart Tidal Swell Mode (TSM) - Creates a harmonic balance in your aquarium reminiscent of the changing flow conditions that would be found in nature. Flow varies from left to right, right to left, calm, and ends with a great surge.

Reef Crest Random Mode - Reef Crest Random Mode simulates the high-energy conditions of a natural reef crest environment.

Lagoonal Random Mode - Simulates the gentler reef zone found in a natural lagoon.

Short Pulse Mode - Allows for wave pulse timings between 0.3 and two seconds, enabling the creation of FAST alternating flow throughout the tank. Use this mode to create a resonant standing wave.

Long Pulse Mode - Allows for wave pulse timings of between 2 seconds and 60 seconds, enabling the creation of slow alternating flow throughout the tank.

Feed Mode - Slows down pump to allow user to feed aquarium. User can select the duration and speed for Feed Mode.

Night Mode - Automatically reduce speed and operates continuously at that speed for a period of time during the night. User can select the duration and speed for Night Mode.

Battery Backup Mode - When used with our battery backup accessory, the VorTech pump will switch to Battery Backup Mode in the event of a power outage and will operate at a user set speed. The LED’s on your EcoSmart driver will count down to indicate how much power is available within the battery.

Auto-Dim - LED’s are turned off and display knob dimmed significantly, but pump functions in its current mode. User can program how long after use before the driver enters Auto-Dim.

On/Off Switch - Tap the on/off switch to turn off and turn on a pump. Hold this button to turn off all pumps in a master/slave group. Tap any pump in the groups’ on/off switch and that pump will turn back on.

Stuff

I still have alot to post on here equipment wise as I get free moments, but thought I would throw in a picture of the pile of equipment that I have accumulated so far..........

Heater

My heater is going to be a ViaAqua Titanium digital 300w. I may need to add one more heater, but I am going to see how this one does by itself first. I can run it on its own digital control, or hook it up to my ReefKeeper. I had good luck with ViaAqua titanium heaters on my other tanks, so I figured I would go back with what worked.

Automatic Top Off

I have always used JBJ's ATO unit on my tanks for topping off my tanks evaporation. I am going back with the JBJ ATO again this time. I have always liked it. I also like that it times out after about a minute and a half so you don't have to worry about flooding your tank. To resolve the issue that occurs sometimes of it timing out and not coming back on, someone suggested plugging it into the ReefKeeper on a cycle and making it cut off and back on every hour, so if it is timed out, it will reset. Should work fine. I am hooking it up to a Aqualifter pump, and will run one single float sensor in the return section of my sump. As far as a topoff container, since I am limited on space in my stand, I am planning on building a shelf inside my stand above the sump, where I can place a Rubbermaid container that can hold a few gallons of water. It will feed through the ATO to my sump.

Protein Skimmer

I have had experience with different skimmers over the years, including Aqua-C, Euro-Reef, Octopus, and Vertex. My last skimmer was a Vertex Alpha 170 Cone skimmer with a Red Dragon pump. It was an awesome skimmer.

This time I chose a smaller skimmer, a Super Reef Octopus XP-1000SSS cone skimmer. It has a Bubble Blaster pump, which is supposed to be an excellent pump. I have found in the past that since I keep my tank so clean, and do very regular water changes, that too big of a skimmer will not perform well on my system because there is not enough junk to pull out of the water. I always ended up with very light colored water in the cup, and not filling up very much, whether I ran it wet or dry. So I went smaller this time, it is still rated for up to a 125g tank, but it is the smaller model in the cone line. I think it will fit perfectly for my style of reefkeeping. I have learned that larger is not always better, as it will not skim anything if oversized on my system.

It fits easily in my Eshopps sump, with plenty of room left over. It is a space saving model since the pump is mounted under the skmmer and not off to the side of it. That will also make it easier for me to vaccuum detritus around it, since we now know of my OCD tank cleaning tendancies.

Everyone I know that has an Octopus skimmer has always liked them. I have tried a couple of them in the past and thought they were good as well. I am looking forward to this new one since it has a cone body, and also has the upgraded nice pump. It has a gate valve on the output to really fine tune the performance.

Calcium Reactor

I am going to run a calcium reactor again on this new tank. After some consideration, I have decided to do alot of SPS again. I know from my past experiences, that my SPS grew much better when I ran the Ca reactor, as it kept my Ca and Alk much more stable. On my previous tank, I had an Aquatic Systems Design reactor, but had sold it with my tank last time. Fortunatelty, one of my friends just happend to now be selling his reactor since he is switching to a fish only tank. I got his reactor, which was good for me since it is an Aquatic Systems Design as well, and I am very familiar on how it works. I will be running it on a 5 lb. CO2 tank with a Milwaukee regulator on it. I tend to run my Ca reactor between 6.6 and 6.8 pH. I like a drip rate of about 1 bubble count per second to a ratio of 3-4 drips per second into my sump from the effluent line. The pH probe is a lab grade Sybon that will be in the Ca reactor, and run from my ReefKeeper Lite Plus.