New Here 220 Gallon Tank

saltwaternoobie · Nov 22, 2012

Hi everyone,

I moved from having a 55 gallon saltwater tank to a 220 gallon tank with 40 gallon refugium. I have lots of questions. Hopefully you guys and wont beat up on me to bad. The tank is 8 ft long and has corner over flows.

I have a question about water flow? What would you recommend for a tank of this size? Right now it has two 1250 gph power heads one on each end.

What are your thoughts on gfo carbon for this tank?

What suggestion would you recommend to keep fish from going over the overflow?

Thanks,
Doug

saltwaternoobie · Nov 22, 2012

Update refugium pictures and full size tank view.

bknapp · Nov 22, 2012

You went small huh? LOL Looking good.

I was going to run GFO and Carbon on my tank but changed my mind about a month in (right after the cycle.) I am now running ecoBAK (biopellets) and rox carbon and have been happy thus far. There are a good group of us here running ecoBAK.

I think for flow, if money is no issue I would go with some MP60's from Ecotech.

I would look into getting acrylic caps for the overflows to keep fish, critters and any algae growth out of your overflows.

Welcome aboard Doug.

Saltlife · Nov 23, 2012

Nice tank you have there.

schooleyosis · Nov 23, 2012

Nice setup. Tagging along. What are the dimensions of that bad boy?

gmoney243 · Nov 23, 2012

Lookin good

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pickupman66 · Nov 23, 2012

IMO for sps you will want 40x-60x turnover in the tank and 8-10x thru a sump. The more random the better in the tank.

I would not go with mp60s. They are expensive and I think with that lengths you would be better served with more sources of flow such as 4 powerheads. Maybe 4 mp40s would do you better. In mmy 6' long 180 I have a pair of koralia. 4's rated at 1400gph each plus a 3000gph closed loop with 4 outlets. This is just internal circulation. I also have 1500-2000gph flow back from my sump. That is distributed with two seaswirls and two other outlets. All this combines to a very random flow in the display.

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saltwaternoobie · Nov 24, 2012

bknapp said:
You went small huh? LOL Looking good.

I was going to run GFO and Carbon on my tank but changed my mind about a month in (right after the cycle.) I am now running ecoBAK (biopellets) and rox carbon and have been happy thus far. There are a good group of us here running ecoBAK.

I think for flow, if money is no issue I would go with some MP60's from Ecotech.

I would look into getting acrylic caps for the overflows to keep fish, critters and any algae growth out of your overflows.

Welcome aboard Doug.

Do you have a link where I can read up on this ecoBak?

MP60's = expensive

Saltlife said:
Nice tank you have there.

Thanks.

schooleyosis said:
Nice setup. Tagging along. What are the dimensions of that bad boy?

Im at work and cant remember off the top of my head but I believe its 96L x 23W x 24H.

gmoney243 said:
Lookin good

Thanks.

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pickupman66 said:
IMO for sps you will want 40x-60x turnover in the tank and 8-10x thru a sump. The more random the better in the tank.

I would not go with mp60s. They are expensive and I think with that lengths you would be better served with more sources of flow such as 4 powerheads. Maybe 4 mp40s would do you better. In mmy 6' long 180 I have a pair of koralia. 4's rated at 1400gph each plus a 3000gph closed loop with 4 outlets. This is just internal circulation. I also have 1500-2000gph flow back from my sump. That is distributed with two seaswirls and two other outlets. All this combines to a very random flow in the display.

Sent from my Galaxy S 3 with Tapatalk.

Thanks. I need to look into this closed loop that you are talking about.

gmoney243 · Nov 24, 2012

A closed loop usually requires holes drilled in the tank just for that purpose.

There's a sticky on our mtrc page labled ecobak lots of good info there. But basically its a bio degradeable media that goes into a reactor water flows through tumbling the pellets and in the process bacteria consume the pellets and phosphates and nitrates. They also put off biofilm that corals eat and the rest gets skimmed out.

Watch these series of videos explaining how biopellets work

http://m.youtube.com/?piggyback=2#/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=sLhmI8vtnfw&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DsLhmI8vtnfw%26feature%3Dendscreen%26NR%3D1

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