I don’t trust the low cost “Chinese” stuff. Not only that but there are features, product support, and other things to consider. To have a long lasting productive thriving reef system you need more than just luck. Ultimately the life support system is the Reef and everything living in the Reef depend on you and the equipment to not just live but thrive. When I build a system and choose equipment my only goal is to provide a stable, reliable, and safe habitat for my fish and corals. When something fails all the life and reef are in jeopardy of quick death or a minimum being set back months of acclimation/growth/color and overall health.
Let’s start with heaters. It’s important to have fail safes so that you don’t cook the fish or let them freeze. There two best ways are a separate heater controller to directly control the heater. They are more dependable than relying on the built in switch of the heater. The other choice is getting a full aquarium controller like a APEX. With an APEX it will control the heart but also can send alerts by text and/or email to alert you if the system is outside of the set range. The APEX has almost infinite uses and can do many things, though not Required they do make things easier and do a lot of work for you.
Pumps, lots of good choices like Echotech Vectra, Octo Varios, Sicce Silent. DC is the new tech here. They are practically silent, powerful, efficient, and speed controllable. I like the Varios-8, it is APEX ready meaning I can fully control the pumps speed with just a cable. You will need ~15x display volume or more GPH.
Lots of good skimmers, they too now also have silent DC pumps. Here your money is going to the pump mostly. The performance, efficiency, and durability all are determined by this piece. Other than that bubbles are bubbles and most all decent skimmers will do the job.
Lights now days you have lots of choices. Metal Halide, T5, And LEDs. Weigh the costs with efficiency, heat, performance, maintenance, style. I have Kessil AP700s and love them. Other than that I’m not getting into what is better, they can all grow whatever corals you want well as long as you get enough fixtures, bulbs, or spread/coverage. Kessil, Radion, Giesemann, Maxspec, ATI, Aqua illumination, Reef Bright, are all good brands.
Next things are powerheads(flow). To keep delicate acropora and other SPS high flow is very important and it’s good for other corals, fish, and overall system health. I recommends and min of 50x display flow up to +100x’s flow between multiple pumps (do not include return, it’s value is too low to make much difference). Two good sized pumps on opposite ends of the display with connected controllers that allows you to create variable, pulsing, random, strong, and broad flow patterns do better than a single pump.
My top choices:
EchoTech Vortech
Tunze
Maxspec Gyre
Neptune WAV
Auto top-off (ATO) is a system that adds purified freshwater to your system as water is evaporated. The best systems have built in failsafes. The best of these is the Tunze Osmolator universal, well proven, fail safes, easy set up and use, doesn’t get better. There are other good options depending on what you need to do.
An APEX can be use to make your own fail safe ATO, they also make a all-in-one ATO from Neptune.
I have a Neptune APEX on my reef and I use it to control and maintain it. It alerts me there are problems. Controls my ATO/Kalk, all of my powerheads and return pump are programmed in also that allows me to have push button custom feed modes, programmed flow patterns and waves. It controlls my titanium heater. Monitors PH, ORP, salt levels, PAR (amount of light going into the display), power usage, flow and heat of powerheads. I also have it run my skimmer neck cleaner every 15min, let me know when the skimmer container is full, also will shut off the skimmer when it is full so no overflow (flood) of nastily water. Turns on dosing pumps to add tiny amounts of supplements to the water in precise increments. And lots lots more.
BRS (Bulk Reef Supply.com) is my favorite place for anything reef/aquarium related. You can earn points on purchase for use to get more stuff you always need. They have monthly group buys you can sign up for and get 10X points, equals 10% of your purchase back in points. They have better if not same price as any other site. Huge selections, advice, Super Support, fast free shipping, and they will go out of there way to make right any problems or help you out on returns/refunds. They are the best.
Check out BRStv on. YouTube or from their web page. Lots of good information for your education, equipment choosing, and research.
I love that they have begun to fund on their own some research/investigations into popular questions about keepsing reefs.
Alsmot for got RO/DI system. Get one! Not optional. BRS has their own, they are just as good if not better than other systems. I feel though that BRS has all competition beat on the filters. Their filters are better, lower coast, and easier to use.
