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That should be fine.

The ones that I bought are bulk reef supple of calcium, alkalinity, magnesium chloride, magnesium sulfate.

Flow patterns are really personal preference. With a 60g, I would think Sync would be better. I'm going to be setting up a 60g cube myself, with an Mp40w ES soon.

Brand of which type of media?

I ordered a bubble magnas dosing pump and it should be here tomorrow, along with 2 mp-10's so I can take the mp-40 out and put back on big tank. I believe even with a mp-40 I was getting a couple dead spots which I believe was forming some cynro algae.
In a 60 cube would it be better to have the vortechs in sync or anti-sync?
What's a good brand of media to dose with? To start with I bought bulk reef supply media. Is there a better brand?

Originally Posted by melev

Time for a picture update, no?

Indeed. Maybe I'll work on that this weekend, after the water change.

Originally Posted by Alaska_Phil

FYI My great looking tank has been without a skimmer since September.

Time for a picture update, no?

In my 55 I use Kalkwasser for top off, and manually dose Alk with a soda ash solution weekly. The Kalk keeps the Ca up, but doesn't quite do the trick for Alk. My tank goes through about a gal of kalk a day.

FYI My great looking tank has been without a skimmer since September.

Thnx guys. You all have great looking tanks and I will probably be getting a sro 3000 external. Thanks for the advice.

I've heard that about skimmers and reefs before too. I think it applies maily to the cheaper skimmers, like my old back Pak. I know some of the higher end skimmers will give ratings for Fish only, soft coral and stony coral tanks now.

That's different - sounds like you'll need a bigger refugium to deal with the water, since the sump will drain down in a power outage.

I think your skimmer question has been answered. I don't agree with the fish-only premise - too many reef keepers use that brand for me to believe that's a F.O. rating.

You need to update your profile pic. It's gone.

I was researching about skimmers last night, and came across a lot of web site that are saying that the gallon amount that the skimmers are rate for is for a fish only tank and that if its going to be put in a reef tank then the amount is cut in half. Does this spun right. I emailed reef octopus an asked them about it as well. Waitin to hear be back from them. If that's the case my reef octopus 6 rate for 120 gallons is only suppose to be on a 60 gallon reef tank. With the excepting of what the coral am fish load is.
Marc when i get the filter room done i post some pics. Naming on having the sump above the refuge letting the water gravity feed into it before getting skimmed and adding a back up tank next to the refuge with a bulkhead fitting to plumb so if the power or pump goins out and drainage happened it can gravity feed into reserve tank.

I'd probably stick with the 3000. I was considering the 5000 for my reef if the Euroreef wasn't going to cut it. I know you are planning to have a lot of satellite tanks, but the main one is still less than 200g.

Note: Please make sure your sump can handle all the combined water that would drain down in a power outage, including water in the skimmer and other reactors.

Thanks Marc, that's great advice.
I still want to stay with a super reef octopus. I have to go with an exturnal but all they have is a Sri 2000 for up to 250 gallons or a sro 3000 for up to 400 gallon. Would the 400 still be to big?

There's also the theory that over skimming will remove too much of bacteria and micro organizms that corals feed on. However, I havn't seen a lot of hard evidence to support that theory.

It's way too much skimmer. I would look for one that is rated for 300g, tops. The display tank may be rated for 195g, but that is probably using outside dimensions. Add sand and rock, and the displacement of water will pretty much add up to what water is in the sump. The 90g refugium technically shouldn't be skimmed, although that water is part of a closed system so it will be affected by the filtration.

Even adding in a frag tank isn't all that much to be concerned about. When I set up the 400g, I contacted Euroreef to discuss the continued use of my skimmer on the larger body of water. Since it was a new setup with a small bioload initially, we agreed it should do the job for the time being but I might need to upgrade later. A year later, the tank had over 65 fish and a lot of coral, but the skimmer had no problem keeping up. That skimmer has been used on the 280g, a 400g, and currently skims the 215 while waiting for the 400g to return.

A skimmer that is too big usually won't be able to collect enough proteins in the water to create a foam head. Why spend that much money only to find it out it was a bad purchase?

Yes, regular dosing will help, but all you are doing is automating what you can do by hand. When I had my 29g and 55g tanks running, I used ESV's B-Ionic, dosing both Part A and Part B every morning. It only took 30 seconds per part, pouring it in at a trickle in an area of high flow, and then I dosed the other tank. The reason to dose it early in the morning is because this is usually when the tank's pH is at its lowest, and the alkalinity dose will boost pH in the tank. It's a buffer, after all.

A dosing pump will add these solutions for you via a timer. You'll have to determine how long it needs to run to add the exact amount you want dosed, and once you know that duration, set your timer to do so once a day. You could even cut the dose in half, dosing every 12 hours if you wanted, or in quarters for every six hours... you get the idea.

There is no need to chase pH levels - pH wil take care of itself if you have the correct salinity, alkalinity, calcium and magnesium levels. Get your Alkalinity to 8 dKH, and pH will rise accordingly.

If you've not read this article yet, please do. It's always accessible from the footer of the site:
http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...-Water-Quality

Nerites are a great suggestion. Scraping the glass clean with a credit card will allow you to observe the refugium more easily.

Any food food that makes its way to the refuguim will be food for all the little micro organisms that live there, but if you're not using the refugium for nutrient control then I don't see anything wrong with having a couple snails in there to keep the glass clean. I'd probably go with Nerite snails as mine seem to always stay on the glass.

I just scrape my sump down every couple months when it starts getting really bad, but my only filtration right now is an algae scrubber and all the algae that grows in the sump under it. I only remove half at a time since it's swarming with copopods and amphipods.

Thank you for the input. Alaska Phil, if I left the refuge with nothing in there except the rock, sand and cheato with out crabs or snails wouldn't the uneating food that filters down and sit in it also cause nitrate and phosphate problems to? I am running bio-pellets alond with skimmer and a GDO reactor. Guess what I am asking is leaving food in there to accumulate better or worse then having snails or crabs whose poop will also accumulate?