Ever heard of the DIY plastic bottle protein skimmer? I tried and this thing works great here a pic, super cheap too.
Sent from my iPad using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
Setting up saltwater tank
- Thread starter Athleticfisherman
- Start date
Ever heard of the DIY plastic bottle protein skimmer? I tried and this thing works great here a pic, super cheap too.
Sent from my iPad using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
I am trying to setup a tank with no skimmer at all, I have tried a algae turf scrubber that works great but it has its faults, dosing carbon works better then a skimmer too but these are all very high maintenance ways. Yes they work better but its a bit of work and remembering.
I actually just ran plenty of high quality live rock, powerheads, made sure not to overstock, with regular not so deep sand bed. *shrug* Nitrates hovered just above 0, which I'm sure I could have gotten to nothing with an algae scrubber or something. Didn't help that I had a carnivorous goby who was very messy.
It's a 20g long. Just had a couple of powerheads (one had a prefilter which I washed daily) and lights. A coralife fixture, which was fine until it failed just like my others. :\
I actually did start this tank with with tapwater, but I switched to distilled pretty quick (before we had an RO unit). It also had silica, not calcium carbonate sand (it's what I had on hand), so I had to watch the alkalinity and pH pretty close.
But the tank was really cheap to set up and maintain. The most expensive part was high quality live rock I got from a place in St. Louis that was already well cured enough that it was essentially ready when I brought it home. Lots of different kinds of coraline on it too. The fixture was a 20" 96watt CF. This one in fact http://www.marinedepot.com/Coralife..._Fixtures-Coralife-ES53111-FILTFIPCTW-vi.html
It's a 20g long. Just had a couple of powerheads (one had a prefilter which I washed daily) and lights. A coralife fixture, which was fine until it failed just like my others. :\
I actually did start this tank with with tapwater, but I switched to distilled pretty quick (before we had an RO unit). It also had silica, not calcium carbonate sand (it's what I had on hand), so I had to watch the alkalinity and pH pretty close.
But the tank was really cheap to set up and maintain. The most expensive part was high quality live rock I got from a place in St. Louis that was already well cured enough that it was essentially ready when I brought it home. Lots of different kinds of coraline on it too. The fixture was a 20" 96watt CF. This one in fact http://www.marinedepot.com/Coralife..._Fixtures-Coralife-ES53111-FILTFIPCTW-vi.html
This pic is pretty interesting (our 90g). The pink anthelia (the LONG pink stuff that looks like a head of hair) is the same colony that is 2nd from the left on the pic of my 20L, and the huge colony of green star polyps is also the one that was on the sand in the 20L.
You can't see it real good, but there are hammer corals at the bottom practically under the rocks because they didn't like all the light higher up....
The frogspawn on the left eventually got moved lower down too because it wouldn't open all the way up that high.
Tank has a 4x130 watt CF orbit fixture (which they haven't made in a long time), 520 watts overall.
That tank did have an aquac ramora hang on back, but it didn't perform very well anyway, and also periodically a phosban and carbon reactor.
This pic is from when it was set up about 3-4 months before, so you can see the growth. The soft corals went crazy. The LPS corals did form new branches, but of course they're slower growers anyway.
You can't see it real good, but there are hammer corals at the bottom practically under the rocks because they didn't like all the light higher up....
The frogspawn on the left eventually got moved lower down too because it wouldn't open all the way up that high.
Tank has a 4x130 watt CF orbit fixture (which they haven't made in a long time), 520 watts overall.
That tank did have an aquac ramora hang on back, but it didn't perform very well anyway, and also periodically a phosban and carbon reactor.
This pic is from when it was set up about 3-4 months before, so you can see the growth. The soft corals went crazy. The LPS corals did form new branches, but of course they're slower growers anyway.
