Hi All,
With the blessing of my wife, we're planning a return to the hobby after taking a 10+ year hiatus. The one goal is to make this system using a type of ULM schedule. One of the mistakes I made in my previous tank, like many other reefers, was to "rush" to get livestock in and felt like I was always playing catch-up afterwards. I'm desperately trying to avoid that mistake this time. Our plan is to not go cray cray on the livestock until all equipment has been purchased and installed. Some fish will be added once everything has cycled to start establishing the system. We've got a 150DD on order and was able to get a 48" 68 gallon (drilled) for a whopping $20 from a local reefer that was never used. My plan is to use the 68 as a refugium that will drain back into the pump compartment. The feed to the refugium will be from a second return pump that will also tee off to feed reactors when need be. With the various advancement in skimmer technology, chemistry, etc, I'm stumped into the size of skimmer to use with such a large refugium for the size of display to not completely deplete the system of nutrients. I'd like to keep this system as natural as possible. So with the said: skimmer size using the projected bio-load, go smaller because of the refugium size will be so large or oversize the bad boy? Currently, I've got 3 skimmers on the list : Vertex Alpha 200, Bubble King double cone 200 and the Reef Octopus elite 200. All these skimmers have a bigger or smaller skimmers in the line. I'd love to get my hands on an MRC Orca Pro 1 but realize that it will be a huge overkill with my needs. Any thoughts on how to select skimmer sizes with larger refugiums? The system will be softies and lps only with a relatively high fish content. Thanks for any inputs and I look forward to keeping active on this forum moving forward.
With the blessing of my wife, we're planning a return to the hobby after taking a 10+ year hiatus. The one goal is to make this system using a type of ULM schedule. One of the mistakes I made in my previous tank, like many other reefers, was to "rush" to get livestock in and felt like I was always playing catch-up afterwards. I'm desperately trying to avoid that mistake this time. Our plan is to not go cray cray on the livestock until all equipment has been purchased and installed. Some fish will be added once everything has cycled to start establishing the system. We've got a 150DD on order and was able to get a 48" 68 gallon (drilled) for a whopping $20 from a local reefer that was never used. My plan is to use the 68 as a refugium that will drain back into the pump compartment. The feed to the refugium will be from a second return pump that will also tee off to feed reactors when need be. With the various advancement in skimmer technology, chemistry, etc, I'm stumped into the size of skimmer to use with such a large refugium for the size of display to not completely deplete the system of nutrients. I'd like to keep this system as natural as possible. So with the said: skimmer size using the projected bio-load, go smaller because of the refugium size will be so large or oversize the bad boy? Currently, I've got 3 skimmers on the list : Vertex Alpha 200, Bubble King double cone 200 and the Reef Octopus elite 200. All these skimmers have a bigger or smaller skimmers in the line. I'd love to get my hands on an MRC Orca Pro 1 but realize that it will be a huge overkill with my needs. Any thoughts on how to select skimmer sizes with larger refugiums? The system will be softies and lps only with a relatively high fish content. Thanks for any inputs and I look forward to keeping active on this forum moving forward.
