20g tall reef with sump/refugium

Jjd531 · Feb 3, 2020

Wanted to make an introduction post on the forum and show off my display reef tank. It's a 20tall with a 10 gallon sump. It's a mixed reef, so softies, sps, lps, anemones. I have about 70 species of coral currently in there, and you can bet I'll jam more in there. I have 2 snowflake davinci clowns, a neon dottyback, a bangai cardinal, a neon goby, and a neon dottyback. I dont test the water regularly or often, but have my 'recipe' and dosing down to a "science" and everything is thriving, but I also do water changes weekly to biweekly, close to 50% of it aswell. The tanks been up and running close to two years, it was originally set up with orbit ic LEDS, but have since moved them to my 10 gallon reef and put 2 AI prime HD's on it (I love them) I didn't get the sump up and running till last month but the tank was fine without it. Also just for anyone curious I dose nearly the whole seachem reef line of products and a couple odds and ends and direct feed corals multiple times per week (whenever I feel like it) I also feed my corals a mix of reef roids, frozen mysis, and frozen cyclopods, all mixed together.

Ippyroy · Feb 3, 2020

Welcome to R2R! Great looking pics.

lapin · Feb 3, 2020

Howdy

Water Changes Good

Billldg · Feb 3, 2020

Welcome to R2R Officially!!! Tank looks great!!!

Mav88 · Feb 3, 2020

Welcome to R2R!! Sure is a full tank

GabeM · Feb 3, 2020

Welcome! Reminds me of my 20 gallon long.

Peace River · Feb 3, 2020

Welcome to R2R!!!

The Aquatic Arsenal · Feb 3, 2020

fishguy242 · Feb 3, 2020

hello welcome ,time for a bigger tank,lol

albano · Feb 3, 2020

Welcome... very nice... maybe we’ll be asking you for help!

Jjd531 · Feb 3, 2020

Thank you guys, I've had a lot of success with the tank as I've kept freshwater for close to 8 years and got into fiddler crabs and brackish and worked my way up to salt, and would be more than happy to fill people in on my methods or advice for success in whatever type of tank.

Mastiffsrule · Feb 3, 2020

Nice to meet you

you got your money worth out of every inch of real estate in that tank. Really cool. Thanks for sharing

Bryson.bobby · Feb 3, 2020

Welcome to r2r

Jjd531 · Feb 3, 2020

Mastiffsrule said:
Nice to meet you

you got your money worth out of every inch of real estate in that tank. Really cool. Thanks for sharing

You bet I did, I had to start pulling some of my softies out and putting them in my 10gal reef to make room for "harder" corals I wasnt able to keep before. Before the primes, with the orbits ics, I couldn't keep what seemed to be a growing list of corals and heard the new primes were coming out and picked them up. I actually plan to further pull rocks out and add more holes where the spots are too small for plugs haha.

Jjd531 · Feb 3, 2020

I also wanted to give a rundown of my filtration aswell. I had the tank running with just a basic skimmer, an HOB filter, and no sump, and got the new lights and sump setup about two months ago. But now starting with the filter sock I have it filled with K1 micromedia tumbling inside, along with the outlet of my reator helping to increase said tumbling. In the reactor I have a large chunk of bioblock cut to fit inside of it and on top of that I have seachem denitrate it mostly functions to remove detritus and nitrates. Also in the sump I have a seachem tidal HOB filter rated for a 50 gallon tank, filled with from bottom to top with; A course sponge, a fine sponge, phosphate pad, carbon pad, filter floss, a bag of marineland carbon (switching to seachem), and a bag of seachem matrix which also holds phosgaurd. I have a refugium with a ton of chaeto, and a 2" sandbed under it I also have a mangrove in there. The shelves for media between the fuge and the return slot have a large bag of carbon draped across them so all the water going back to the tank passes through it and on top of that bag I have another small bag of phosgaurd. I have a small reefglass protein skimmer, its powered by wood air stone and sends waste to a Mason jar. I also have 4×4" block of the bioblock in there, it's the giant marinepure biofilter media block, I won it at a frag swap and it was too big, but so soft I cut it into 4 equal pieces with a butter knife so i have it for other applications. My return pump is the Current USA DC Eflux Pump, it's a great pump it has variable control aswell to adjust water for whatever reason easily. All the inflow/ outflow is hard plumbed with pvc and glue, I tried vinyl but it was not the way to go.